


Dutiful

by Kat_of_a_Different_Color



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Underage, F/M, Older Man/Younger Woman, Period-Typical Underage, Pregnancy, Selyse died at some point, Stannis Baratheon Wins the Battle of the Blackwater, Wedding Night, What-If
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:06:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22608238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat_of_a_Different_Color/pseuds/Kat_of_a_Different_Color
Summary: When Stannis Baratheon wins the Battle of the Blackwater, Robb Stark agrees to step down as King in the North on the condition that Stannis wed Robb's sister, Sansa Stark, lately captive of the Lannisters.Sansa has heard mostly negative things of Stannis Baratheon - but she knows that her father thought him an honorable man, no matter what anyone else said of him.Their wedding night, though, does not have the easiest start...
Relationships: Stannis Baratheon/Sansa Stark
Comments: 103
Kudos: 372





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all, this is just an excuse for smut. However, I may be persuaded to continue it if enough people like it (/if my fic muse cooperates)! So please leave a comment if you like this :D

“Your Grace?” she says softly — tentatively — as she looks nervously between his back, where he is standing at the window and looking out over the water, and the enormous bed against one wall. She had heard from one of the servants that the bed King Robert (and Joffrey, the thought of whom makes her cringe, still) used was ordered removed by Stannis, who was apparently displeased that this was the only other option presented to him for the King’s bed. He would prefer something simpler, no doubt, from what she’s heard of him.

He does not respond, just keeps staring out the window. Pressing her lips together, she fists her hands in her skirts for as long as she can bear before they wrap around her abdomen.

“Your Grace?” she repeats. He makes a noise that she supposes is one encouraging her to continue, though he still faces away from her and says not one word. “Your Grace, I know little — _very_ little — of the marriage bed. My mother- when I left Winterfell, I was too young for her to tell me anything, and all I had here, until you came, was Cersei. How-” Her voice fails her for a moment, and she has to swallow several times before she continues, “How would you like me to proceed?”

The idea of a bedding terrified her, so she is grateful that he has spared her that indignity, but… at least if she were in only her shift and smallclothes she might be able to do something more than stand here uselessly!

He takes several long deep breaths, then turns from the window, his eyes dark. Her own eyes widen with fright as he steps toward her, though she forces herself to stay still. “Come here,” her- her _husband_ , now, says. “I’ll undo your laces.”

She would ask how he knows how to undo ladies’ gowns, but he was married before. Surely that must be why.

“Take the pins out of your hair,” he instructs, his voice a little harsh — more so than she had hoped for, in their marriage bed. Nevertheless, she lifts her hands to her head and takes the pins out, one by one. His breathing changes a little as her hair tumbles down her back, braids still woven through half of it, becoming shorter, sharper. He has finished with her laces, too, and when she drops her arms, her heavy dress slides down to land around her feet, leaving her in a thin, mostly sheer shift that one of the maids had brought her a few mornings ago, saying it was from Marya Seaworth, the wife of King Stannis’ Hand. Her smallclothes are of the same sheer material, and Sansa does like the way they feel against her skin, which is goose-pimpling from a breeze that sweeps through the room. There is a vaguely choked noise from behind her, and she starts to turn, to see what’s wrong, but Stannis barks, “Get in the bed,” and she has little choice but to comply. As she scurries toward the huge bed, she hears the noises of someone — Stannis — undressing behind her. The mental image makes heat shoot through her face, and by the time she is seated comfortably at the top of the bed, covers pooling in her lap, she is blushing beet-red.

When she looks up at Stannis, he is simply looking at her, face impassive. She dare not look anywhere below his face, for fear she will stare and make them both uncomfortable, so she does not realize that he is still wearing his own smallclothes until he is standing at the side of the bed, staring at her. Without her permission, her eyes dart downward, and — to her consternation — she finds that she cannot look up again. The front of his smallclothes is tented out; she feels her lips part as her breath becomes more shallow.

“My king,” she begins, falling silent when he lifts a hand.

“Call me Stannis,” he orders, “when we are alone. Please.” The last word is added as an afterthought, the barest attempt to make it seem less like a command and more a request from her husband. Still, she does not feel that she can refuse this request.

Bowing her head for a moment, she murmurs, “Stannis,” blinking quickly when she sees a twitch from the bulge in his smallclothes.

“My queen,” he says — quieter than before, but barely less harsh — “please lie down.”

Obeying the command, she replies, “If I am to use your given name, husband, should you not use mine?”

He looks startled at her question — more instruction than query — but inclines his head. “Sansa, then.” Crawling atop the bed — under the covers — he sheds his smallclothes; though she cannot see, she still feels that no cloth save that of her own underthings separates them when her new husband presses against her side. A strange heat concentrated at her hip makes her quiver somewhere deep in her belly, and her eyes drift shut of their own volition as she makes a soft noise, almost a whimper. “Are you well, Sansa?” the king asks, hand covering her shoulder; when she nods, his hand slides down to cup her breast. Another noise, choked this time, escapes her throat, but as his thumb rubs against her nipple, she cannot find it in herself to care. “May I remove this?” her husband asks, plucking at the fabric of her shift with his other — unoccupied — hand.

“Yes,” she whispers softly, voice barely loud enough to reach his ears over the crackling of the fire. “You may.” As soon as the words pass her lips, the king has gathered her shift in his hands and pulled it over her head, leaving her — almost — completely bare to his gaze. His eyes flit to her face; she shivers at how dark they look, the pupils consuming his already-dark blue irises.

“And these?” Stannis brings a hand to the drawstring of her smallclothes, this time barely waiting for her nod to tug at the drawstring until the waist loosens. “Lift your hips up,” he tells her, dragging the smallclothes down her legs when she follows the direction. As she relaxes her hips back into the mattress, he pulls the smallclothes from her feet and tosses them behind him, bringing his hands between her legs and parting them as he crawls back towards her. His… male member is flushed darkly; in truth, it looks painful, and she _almost_ wants to ask him about it, but cannot muster the courage to do so.

His fingers probe between her thighs; she flinches away from the odd sensation, blushing when he looks at her, seeming surprised and not a little annoyed.

“My queen?” he says quietly. “I must needs touch you here to prepare you for our duty.”

“Oh,” she breathes, trying to relax again as his fingers reach between her thighs, teeth digging into her lower lip. His look of frustration does not help her to feel less tense, but she tries. The quivering feeling in her low belly returns as he strokes her folds, dragging his fingertips back and forth as if searching — very slowly — for something. He reaches a spot that makes her hips buck up into his hand, though she masters herself quickly into relaxing, not wanting to seem wanton. It is difficult, though, because his touches have centered on that spot, and it makes her want to thrash about on the bed. Instead, she feels her body get tenser and tenser — and then her eyes fly open with a gasp as one of his fingers slides inside her. She pants at the feeling, staring up into his eyes, which are somehow even darker than before, pupils blown almost to the edge of his irises.

He withdraws the finger, making her relax just a little, but then presses into her again, this time with _two_ fingers. She whines at the odd stretching feeling at her center, her hips working, back and forth, to ease the strange ache. For several minutes, he simply withdraws his fingers and pierces them back into her, over and over and over.

When he adds a third finger, she makes a small pained noise. “My- Stannis?” she breathes, her chest rising and falling with quick, shallow, uneven breaths. “What-”

“My-” Her husband clears his throat, and the sound is too loud in the quiet room. “I am yet larger than this, my queen.” As he speaks, his fingers twist inside her, making her whimper again with a slight grimace. This time, when his fingers re-enter her, he leaves them there and returns his attentions to the place at the top of her center, bringing a return of the odd quivery feeling; combined with the feeling of her husband’s fingers moving - if barely - inside her, his attentions make her sigh with pleasure as her back arches toward him. He leans his head down and mouths at her breast, taking her nipple between his teeth, worrying at the taut little bud - it shoots jolts of pleasure down her spine to her center, where his hands are still moving gently to prepare her for his member.

Gradually, her muscles tighten — and tighten — until she feels as tense as a bowstring, pulled back and ready to shoot — and then, all of a sudden, the tension releases as waves of pleasure wash over her. She is vaguely aware of the way her inner muscles tighten around his fingers, but then he is removing them and pressing into her with his member, which seems — somehow, impossibly — even larger than it looked before. She gasps and winces, face screwing up with pain, the pleasure fleeing as her husband pushes further and further into her.

“Ah-” she huffs out, wanting to whine at the pain but refusing; she must seem strong to her husband, who is one of the strongest, hardest men she knows to exist in the whole of Westeros.

When she opens her eyes again, looking nervously up at her husband, she is surprised to see the tension twisting his face, his eyes squeezed shut. He looks to be in rather a lot of pain, and she wonders at how any children at all are born, if the marital act is this painful.

Lifting a hand to his cheek, her fingertips only brush his skin before his eyes snap open and his hips jerk a bit, pressing deeper into her than she thought possible. “… Stannis? Are you in a _very_ great deal of pain?” she asks, peering up at him with concern. He makes a huffing noise that might almost be a laugh, were her husband the sort of man to laugh.

“No,” he grits out, teeth grinding together, “not pain, my queen.”

* * *

Being inside his new wife is the sweetest agony he has ever known. While Selyse was always cold and passionless, preferring to get their duty over with as quickly as possible, Sansa is anything but, though her face betrays the pain she feels at this moment. He was warned to take his time with Sansa, to take care to stretch her sheath with his fingers to accustom her to his size before taking her maidenhead. He had even ensured that she peaked beforehand.

But she is so tight — so hot — so wet — that it is all he can do not to thrust wildly into her to find his own release.

Her fingertips on his cheek surprise him into making the smallest of movements, restrained before he can hurt her more than he must already be.

“Stannis?” she whispers. “Are you in a _very_ great deal of pain?”

Her question brings a choked-off laugh to his lips. “No,” he tells her, holding all his muscles tense so as not to give in to the near-overwhelming desire to just _fuck_ her, “not pain, my queen.” Not pain at all.

He grunts with the effort of holding back, and then she shifts beneath him, bending one of her knees and tilting her hips so that he slides even deeper inside her — and it breaks his tightly-held control.

With a whispered apology, he thrusts into her and groans at the feeling of her walls gripping him.

“Oh,” she gasps; her inner muscles ripple around him, and he makes an inelegant noise as he peaks, spilling his seed inside her, completing their duty. Never before has he taken such pleasure in his marital duty — but before, it wasn’t with _her_ , with Sansa. Feeling shattered with exhaustion at the long day, Stannis reminds himself to pull out of his wife and collapse at her side instead of atop her.

When his eyes open again, the pale light of dawn is just brightening the sky beyond the window of the queen’s chambers and her head is resting on his shoulder, her red hair trailing across his chest. He lifts a hand to the silky strands, winding his fingers in her tresses.

He never thought he would marry again, but when Selyse died shortly before the Battle of the Blackwater, he knew he would have to. After all, Shireen, being a girl, cannot inherit the Iron Throne. He hadn’t wanted to deal with all the noble families parading their daughters in front of him, hoping he would choose one of them, when months before none of them would have looked at him twice. Luckily, when he won at the Blackwater, Robb Stark had remembered that his father had died to support Stannis’ claim on the Iron Throne and agreed to recognize him as King of the Seven Kingdoms. Part of the agreement for Stark to step down as King in the North — the only way he had been able to appease his bannermen, in truth — was that Stannis would marry Sansa Stark — now Sansa Baratheon, he reminds himself, feeling a twinge of smugness in his chest. And it wasn’t as if it was some great ordeal to marry the girl. She was quite pretty — beautiful, in fact — and Davos had pointed out that her skill with the courtesies he generally considered useless would help him to win over the court.

They shouldn’t _need_ to be won over, he had wanted to argue; it was their duty to support his reign just as it was his duty to take up the throne — but he knew that such an argument was pointless. Whether or not they _should_ , the court would indeed need to be won over, and Sansa Stark had grown into a beautiful young woman who was very capable of doing so.

His ex-nephew, Joffrey, that incest-begotten bastard, had treated the girl abominably, and while Stannis would not have blamed her for despising King’s Landing, she had taken the news that she would have to stay here with little more than a slightly-resigned shrug.

The small motions of his wife — his new queen — shifting against him bring him back to himself, reminding him that he had woken up hard and aching to be inside her once more. He is hardly going to impose on her _again_ , though — she is sure to be sore after their coupling the night before. If he doesn’t want her to be uncomfortable, though, he should really get up before she discovers his state. When he tries to rise, though, she shifts again, arm curling around his torso, and makes an incoherent, dissatisfied noise. He freezes, waiting to see if she will wake in truth, for a long moment, but when she stays asleep, he tries rising again.

Two further attempts later have him no further towards rising without his queen making disapproving noises, so he settles in to wait until she wakes before trying yet again. At least once she is awake, he will be able to ask her politely to let him up.

It takes longer than he’d like for her to wake, though his mislike of it has nothing to do with lying abed, one of her arms flung across him; no, it is the feeling that he is neglecting his duties as king, by languishing away with his new queen, that he despises. If he bedded her again, he could excuse this laziness as a continuation of his duty as husband and king, but he has already decided not to do anything of the sort this morning. He heaves a — rather annoyed — sigh and glares up at the ceiling, and so misses the way Sansa’s eyelids flutter open and fix on him with an expression of something approaching fondness — an expression that quickly shifts to wariness when she sees his own expression.

“My k- Stannis?” she whispers, correcting herself midway. “Is aught amiss?”

He tenses with surprise, but forces himself to relax back into the mattress. Eyeing her arm, draped across his torso, he says, more tersely than he means to, “You misliked my attempts to leave, my queen.”

“Oh!” she gasps, retracting her arm so quickly it’s as though she’s been burned. “You have my sincerest apologies, my king, for keeping you from your duties.”

He nods, once, and sits up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed — overlarge and gaudy, he thinks with annoyance, as he does every time he thinks about the bed — and remembering that he is unclothed. Blast.

Well, he’s not going to fish about under the covers for his smallclothes; it would be too humiliating.

“My king?” Sansa says tentatively from behind him.

“Hmm?” he all but growls, turning his head only slightly, not seeing the way she shrinks back from him.

She pauses, and the silence stretches out between them like threads of honey. He is about to turn further, to see her face, when she says, “I wish you well in your tasks today, my king.”

“Thank you,” he replies, the words feeling odd in his mouth. He is not a man accustomed to thanking people, though — he turns and looks at her — the way she is smiling makes him think perhaps he should thank people more often. Or at least he should thank _her_ more often, for he should like to keep his new queen as happy as he can. Which is not like to be _very_ happy, but he can at least try.

He rises and crosses the room, spotting his dressing robe lying on the back of a chair; he ties it about himself before turning and making an aborted bow to her. She is sitting in the middle of the bed, the sheets pulled up to cover her chest with one hand clutching at them. He rather wishes the sheets weren’t there, so he could see her teats again without anything in the way, but frowns at the way the thought affects him and turns for the door, not seeing the way Sansa’s expression falls — instead berating himself for thinking lustful thoughts about his queen when there is no reason to act on them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to know if you liked this/want more of it! Also, if you do, any ideas you have for a plot-type thing would be very welcome, as otherwise you will be subjected to large amounts of fluff and just them figuring out their feelings for each other. Also some stuff with Shireen, because I love her!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features: a hot bath, tea, dinner, and lemon cakes. Also Shireen, for those of you who like her (honestly, does anyone dislike her? apart from bloody Selyse, I mean).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo... there is no smut in this chapter. Very sorry. It's looking like Ch. 3 will be pretty much all smut, though, so hopefully that makes up for it? (A hint: I had to Google image search "Stannis Baratheon doublet" for something in Ch. 3! I promise it was relevant...)  
> LOL, I have been informed that I was wrong about the whole 'majesty'/'grace' thing, so I've changed all instances of 'majesty' to 'grace'! So much thanks to Lindsayr28 for correcting me :D  
> On to the chapter!

When the bathtub arrives, followed shortly by a small army of servants carrying steaming water, Sansa is surprised. “I didn’t call for a bath,” she says quietly to her handmaiden, a Northern girl named Sarra whom Mother sent with Lady Brienne, who is now her sworn shield.

“The king called for it for you,” Sarra replies, just as quietly, blushing a little as she adds, “he said he thought you might be… sore.”

“Oh,” Sansa says blankly, wondering that the king — Stannis — would even think to pay attention to that she might wish for a hot bath. Which she does; she _is_ sore from his attentions last night, though she blushes to think on them in the light of day.

“That was rather sweet of him, don’t you think?” Sarra says as she helps Sansa into the tub. “Thoughtful.”

“Hmm,” Sansa murmurs as she sinks into the still-steaming water, feeling her skin prickle fiercely at the heat. She supposes it is rather thoughtful of the king — of Stannis — but he’s so… stiff and unyielding that it seems completely uncharacteristic for him to do such a thing, such a kindness.

She soaks in the bath until the water goes tepid, sighing when she finally rises from the water. “Thank you, Sarra,” she says to her handmaiden, who wraps her in a towel and dries her with brisk movements.

“Of course, my lady,” Sarra replies. “Or- should I call you ‘your grace’ now, my lady?”

Sansa rolls her eyes. “I’ve told you before, you can just call me Sansa, Sarra.”

Sarra blushes. “I can’t do that, my lady,” she replies. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

Sighing, Sansa says, “Well, I suppose if we are being _exceedingly_ proper, you should call me ‘your grace,’ but really, Sarra, I’d prefer it if you called me Sansa. There are too few people here who call me by my name.” Blushing a little, she recalls that even the king, her husband, did not use her name, instead calling her ‘my queen’ even when he was inside of her.

“I am sorry that your family could not be here for your wedding, your majesty,” Sarra says softly, placing a hand on Sansa’s shoulder and letting it rest there for a long moment, comforting her. She wishes she could pull Sarra into a hug, but her handmaiden would be uncomfortable if she did that, she thinks.

So instead she just nods and asks Sarra, “Do I have anything on my schedule for today?”

Sarra shakes her head. “Only dinner this evening with the king and princess. But I believe that Princess Shireen is planning to take tea in the garden this afternoon. Will you be joining her?”

Smiling, Sansa replies, “Of course! Shireen is such a lovely girl.”

“She is,” Sarra says with an echo of Sansa’s smile. “What should you like to wear?”

Sansa tilts her head, carefully considering her options. She’s not going into court formally, but she should still make an effort to respect her husband’s House. “The golden-yellow dress with gray bodice,” she tells Sarra, who nods at her choice. Yellow tends to make her look jaundiced, but she does not want to appear as if she is in mourning the day after her wedding, so some of the dresses with the black of House Baratheon would not be as appropriate. And she does not have too many gowns to choose from, since King Stannis is much more frugal than either of the kings before him. Which of course is a good thing, she thinks, as he has informed her that the Crown is in debt to the Iron Bank for a high sum.

Sarra helps her on with the dress, chattering lightly about this and that the whole while. Once she is done, Sansa thanks her and sends her to fetch a breakfast tray, feeling quite famished.

In the early afternoon, she walks the gardens, easily finding the spot where she and Shireen have been taking tea together for the past few weeks. Shireen is sitting there alone, and she smiles brightly when she looks up to see Sansa approaching. “Welcome!” Shireen calls. “I was hoping to see you this afternoon.”

Sansa grins. “I am glad,” she says as she sits down in the chair beside Shireen, who calls a pageboy over to request some lemon cakes and honey cakes. “I was hoping to discuss something with you,” she says to the younger girl, who at nine is only five years younger than Sansa’s fourteen, though Shireen knows already much more of ruling than Sansa herself does.

“What is it?” Shireen asks.

Sansa bites her lip. This is a rather difficult topic, but she wanted to address it sooner rather than have anything fester, now that she is technically Shireen’s stepmother. “I know that I am technically your stepmother now, but I would never want to try to replace Queen Selyse in your affections,” Sansa says to Shireen.

Shireen swallows, grimaces, says, “Mother was always cold with me. I think she despised me for not being a boy, an heir for my father.”

“Oh, Princess,” Sansa says softly, feeling her heart twist with pain at the thought of this sweet little girl being treated so awfully by her own mother, when a mother’s role is to nurture and guide her children.

“You can call me Shireen, if you want,” the princess says with a shrug. “And it’s- it’s not that I’m not sad she died, but I think she’s at peace now, and she never was when she was alive.”

“You can call me Sansa, then, _Shireen_ ,” she replies softly. “And I’m still sorry you lost her.”

Shireen smiles, though her eyes are tear-bright, and turns in her seat to lean over and wrap her arms around Sansa, who smiles into the embrace and hugs Shireen back.

* * *

Stannis grimaces at the reports of his Small Council. There is no good news, apart from that the Northern armies are close to defeating the Lannister armies. But the Vale has declined his request that its lord — young Robert Arryn, whose somewhat mad mother rules as his regent — come and swear fealty to him. He feels his teeth start to grind at the audacity of them to refuse a call from their true king.

And to add to all that, he has no Master of Coin, Baelish having given his men the slip and disappeared as they took King’s Landing. Who he is supposed to send to the Iron Bank to request an extension on the loan that he _hopes_ Robert was somehow misinformed about, he has no idea. Perhaps Baelish, that snake, was lying to him about it. He does not want to believe that his brother would have set Westeros on such an unstable path, but he is not unaware of his older brother’s faults. It is not impossible that Robert would have done something like this.

It’s the sort of thing that he would have hoped that Jon Arryn would have caught and dealt with somehow. Eddard Stark’s time as Robert’s Hand was too short for this mess to have begun with him, and whatever else he was, Eddard Stark was not the sort to take out an astronomical loan from the Iron Bank. He had more sense than that.

With a sigh, he dismisses his Small Council — at present _very_ small, since he is lacking lords to fill most of the seats. Davos is his Hand, of course, but the other seats are largely empty. The Grand Maester is still doddering old Pycelle, since he hasn’t managed to die yet and the Grand Maester is chosen by the Citadel, not the king, a fact that makes him want to grind his teeth once more. Varys has maintained his position as Master of Whisperers, and while Stannis is loathe to accept a man whose loyalty is as changeable as the tides, there’s really no better option.

He rubs at his forehead. For the whole meeting, he was plagued by mental images of his new queen, and now that he is alone, they have worsened. Now is not the time for foolish thoughts about her beauty, her charm, the look on her face as he was inside her last night. Gritting his teeth, he attempts to master himself, but the images will not go away.

“You know, your grace,” Davos says, “no one would blame you for seeking out your queen the day after your wedding.”

“Out,” he snaps, alarmed that he hadn’t even realized the other man was still in the room with him. Davos leaves, but his words have sparked an idea that will not let go of Stannis’ mind. He _could_ go find his queen. No one would object, surely, if he wanted to spend time with her, if he wanted to take her back to their rooms to do their duty. The realm needs an heir, after all.

Mind made up, he goes first to Sansa’s rooms, where he finds the handmaiden he talked to this morning about fetching her a bath. When asked where the queen is, she tells him that “Her Grace went to the garden for tea with Princess Shireen.”

Drat. He cannot exactly barge into the garden and demand her time when she is getting to know his daughter. “Very good,” he says to the handmaiden, deciding to return to his office near the Small Council chamber, where he can at least attempt to get some work done.

Several hours later, he has accomplished precisely nothing and is quite displeased with himself for it. However, the hour for dinner has come, so at least he can now spend time in the company of his queen and his daughter without interrupting them at their tea.

He arrives to the room where he has arranged for their dinner to be sent first of the three of them and is — irrationally, he knows — annoyed at their tardiness, though the agreed-upon time for dinner is still a few minutes away. While he waits, he sips at the lemon water that is waiting on the table, growing more and more tense as moments and minutes pass with still no sign of his new wife and daughter.

When they arrive, they are both laughing, and something in his chest eases slightly, to see them thus. He had been somewhat concerned that they would not get along, that Sansa, like Selyse, would largely ignore Shireen.

“My king,” Sansa says with a demure curtsy, ducking her head.

Shireen copies the curtsy but instead says, “Father.”

He greets them both, waving at the two other chairs at the round table. Sansa sinks gracefully into her seat, while Shireen is rather less graceful — though she is several years younger than Sansa and thus has plenty of time to learn gracefulness. Pouring them both goblets of lemon water, he says, “I hear that you took tea together in the garden.”

Sansa and Shireen exchange a glance that makes him wonder what they discussed that is making them look so melancholy. “We did, my king,” Sansa says. “Shireen had lemon cakes for me, which was very lovely of her.”

“Ah, do you like lemon cakes?” he asks, feeling rather foolish for even having to ask such a question.

“I do. They’ve always been my favorite — we had a few lemon trees in the glass gardens at Winterfell, but they were always a special treat.” She smiles as she reminisces. “I think the first time we had lemon cakes, I was three — Robb told me that I ate not only mine but also his and Father’s, and demanded more, though I was usually quite ladylike, even then.”

“Father’s always liked lemon things, too,” Shireen pipes up, “though he doesn’t really have that many sweets.”

“You don’t like sweets?” Sansa says incredulously, and he is reminded of how young she is. Looking around the room, she spots a servant by the door and demands, “Are there lemon cakes for dessert?”

“Er- um- er- yes, your grace,” the young man stammers, looking somewhat gobsmacked that the queen is talking to him.

“Well!” Sansa says, turning back to the table. “You’ll just have to try some of the lemon cakes when they come for dinner, St- my king.” She ducks her head, blushing a little, and he realizes that she was about to use his name and corrected herself. Since they are in front of servants and Shireen, he is grateful, not wanting to seem too casual. It is important to uphold proper decorum.

“Perhaps I will,” he says, trying to sound at least somewhat encouraging, though he has had little stomach for sweets since the Siege of Storm’s End. He supposes being reduced to eating horses, dogs, and cats — and nearly being forced to eat their own dead — could do that to a person, as could the bitter, impotent anger at Mace Tyrell and his army’s commanders feasting within sight of the walls of Storm’s End. However, Renly certainly still had a taste for sweets after the siege, so perhaps not.

Lemon cakes are _delicious_ , it turns out. Despite that he does not like sweets overmuch, the lemon cakes have the perfect balance of sweetness and tartness for his palate.

“See?” Sansa cries. “I knew you would enjoy them!”

He inclines his head. “I do, indeed, like them,” he replies, watching as she bites into a lemon cake of her own. Her eyes almost roll back with pleasure at the taste, and she lets out a moan that has him hardening in an instant — not that he hasn’t been half-hard since she walked into the room, but he has been trying to restrain himself. His conversation at dinner was rather stilted, his mind being filled with indecent images of his queen as it was. Sansa and Shireen had both seemed to notice that he was somewhat distracted, though they managed to fill the silence with some discussion. He is embarrassed to say he barely followed the conversation they made, so distracted by the thoughts of Sansa in his bed was he.

His foot starts tapping on the floor, and try as he might, he cannot stop its movement. He glares down at his plate, and thus misses the slightly alarmed look that passes between Sansa and his daughter. When he looks back up, they are both applying themselves to the lemon cakes and honey cakes, respectively, on their plates.

Clearing his throat, he opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, and says, “My queen, shall we retire?”

Sansa looks startled for a moment, then nods, somewhat jerkily, and rises from the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought! I got so many responses to the previous chapter - it was seriously amazing. I would really love to continue getting feedback on what you think of this story, so... please comment :D


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut! Night-after-the-wedding-night smut. :D

There is little conversation on the way to the king’s chambers, though with the way he has been acting tonight, she was hardly expecting great conversation — gracious, with the way he’s been acting ever since he took the city! As soon as the treaty with Robb — the one that required their marriage — was proposed, she lost all hope of going home again. What she once said of King’s Landing, though she certainly didn’t mean it at the time, has become true: it is her home now. It will be her home for the rest of her life, most likely. If she ever goes back to Winterfell, it will be as a visitor, never as a resident. The thought makes tears come to her eyes, though she grits her teeth and fights them off. Surely King Stannis will think her a silly little girl if he sees her tears for her childhood home, now lost to her.

(It does not occur to her that Stannis, too, lost his childhood home, and so may be more sympathetic than she thinks.)

When they reach his chambers, Stannis holds the door open and gestures for her to enter, looking only at her instead of the two Kingsguard who follow them. She looks up at his stern face and attempts a smile, though she thinks it doesn’t look as kind or friendly as she would wish it to, based on the way his brow furrows. Ducking her chin, she steps into the room. Immediately, her eyes are drawn once more to the enormous bed — the bed she slept in last night, with the king, though she knows she has her own chambers. Does Stannis intend for them to sleep in the same bed most nights? Or was last night an anomaly, and she should expect to be sent back to her own rooms once they have completed their marital duty for the night? She does not know.

She slept better last night than she has most any night since her father’s head was cut off. If not for waking to the king’s anger, she would like to stay here with him again, and as often as possible.

Perhaps he means for her to share his bed and his rooms whilst they are attempting to conceive a child, and once she is with child, she will sleep alone in her own rooms. This seems to make sense, so she decides to assume that this is what they shall do; King Stannis can correct her if she is wrong. He is certainly good at pointing out everyone’s shortcomings, so she fully expects him to do the same with her — to continue doing the same with her, in truth, for he has already on several occasions pointed out when she has said foolish things. Luckily all of these occurrences have been in private; she would perish of embarrassment if he were to point out her faults in front of others.

While she has been staring at the bed like a fool, the king has come up behind her and begun unlacing her dress. While last night was their wedding night and she could surely be forgiven for leaving her dress in a crumpled heap upon the floor, she is not going to do such tonight, not when there is no excuse for not leaving it draped over a chair. “Thank you, Stannis,” she says, reaching up behind her head and beginning to pull the pins from her hairstyle.

She hears a sharp intake of breath from the king when her hair tumbles down her back, well past her shoulder-blades. Hmm — perhaps he likes the color of her hair? She sweeps it forward over her shoulder so he can finish unlacing her gown. “You are welcome, my queen,” he replies. He seems loathe to use her name, and she wonders if he really meant for her to use his. The thought that she has been using his given name without him wanting her to makes her blush hot with embarrassment. Just then, her dress slips from her shoulders to pool about her feet; she bends over, toeing off her slippers, to pick it up so she can lay it over a chair so as to ensure it will not be crumpled in the morning, so her maids will not be frustrated, and hears another sharp intake of breath from the king.

Turning to look at him, she sees a flush high on his cheekbones that makes her wonder what he is thinking about. “May I help you with your doublet, my king?” she asks, blushing a little to be so bold, but knowing that she appreciates help undressing, and he might, too. Though of course his doublet laces down the front, not up the back, so it is much easier for him to undo.

He stares at her without saying anything for a moment that feels a _lifetime_ long. When he just keeps staring at her, wordless, she decides to just go ahead and begin unlacing his doublet. What can it hurt?

As she begins, though, searching for where the knot and extra laces of the doublet are tucked in, her fingers brush against the front of his breeches, which are tented out just like his smallclothes were last night, and he gasps audibly, his hands coming to circle her wrists with a tight grip. “My king?” she says tentatively. “Shall I stop?”

His hands tighten convulsively around her wrists before loosening. “Continue,” he says, though his voice is rough.

She finally finds the ends of the laces and tugs them free, though her hands tremble slightly. It is a matter of a few moments to untie the knot in the laces, and a minute or so more to unlace the doublet completely. In all that time, the king says not one word to her, and she keeps her eyes on the movement of her hands so as to avoid looking at him, meeting his eyes.

When she has unlaced the front of his doublet completely, she lets go of the laces and takes a half-step back from the king, wondering what she should do next. She feels vulnerable like this, in only her shift and stockings, like- well. She can tell that he is looking at her.

He removes the doublet as she stands there, watching him with guarded eyes; he pulls his shirt over his head easily. She has to take a breath in at the sight of his bare torso, feeling like the room is suddenly airless. Perhaps he hears her, for he finally speaks again: “Take off your shift and smallclothes and get in the bed.”

She swallows and obeys hastily, pulling the shift up and over her head, untying the drawstring of her smallclothes, missing the way he drinks in the sight of her legs, her own torso, the spill of her hair as she turns to lay them both over her dress. “Should I not take off my stockings as well?” she asks, already reaching for the tops of them, ready to untie her garters and roll the stockings down.

“No,” he says, voice just as rough as before. “Leave them.”

Blinking with not a little confusion, she turns for the bed, moving swiftly, as the air in the king’s chamber is cool enough that she would prefer to be under the warmth of the covers. The king turns away from her to unlace his breeches and remove his own smallclothes, and before she knows it, he is beside her in the large bed, a hand at her shoulder urging her to lie down. She meets his eyes and nearly gasps at the heat in them, stopping herself just before the sound escapes her mouth. Surely the king does not want to hear silly girlish noises like that.

Keeping his weight on an elbow, the king leans down and kisses her on the mouth, his other hand moving to her side, brushing up over her skin until it reaches her breast. There, he flicks his thumb past her nipple, making her gasp for true this time. Immediately, he presses the advantage she has given him, licking his tongue into her mouth in a way that makes her want to gasp all over again. It tickles, a little, but it makes something in her chest — and lower, too — feel warm and lovely, so she licks back at his tongue, wondering if this is proper and then deciding that she cares not. It feels good, and she likes it. Hopefully he does not think her too wanton for responding thus.

The hand at her breast moves lower, seemingly following that warm feeling, until his large, callused fingers brush up against her folds, causing her to shiver with delight at the feeling. She tries to stifle the unladylike noises that want to come out of her at the movement of his fingers inside her — she had not known such a thing was even possible, before last night! — but moans into his mouth as her toes curl with the pleasure that washes through her. Through it all, the king keeps kissing her with abandon.

When his fingers glide easily inside her, he shifts his weight, pulling back from her slightly and moving between her thighs, thumb stroking over the little nub at the top of her center while he lines himself up and pushes into her.

She had expected pain, given how it felt last night when he entered her for the first time, but she only feels a lovely fullness and little sparkles of pleasure that become much larger sparkles of pleasure as he begins to move. Her mouth falls open at the feeling of him dragging against her inner walls, and that feeling only intensifies when he slides a hand down the outside of her leg, over her stockings, and encourages her to lift it, to wrap it around his waist. It changes the angle of his movements inside of her, and her head falls backwards at the glorious sensation, automatically lifting her other leg to see if it makes this feel even better — and it does.

This time there is no pain at all, just the burn of pleasure as the king — Stannis, she thinks but does not say, looking up into his eyes — moves inside her. As their eyes meet, his hips make a little stuttering movement, and she gives a short little gasp at the way it makes his pelvis rub up against the spot that seems to bring her so much pleasure.

* * *

The only feeling better than finally being able to do his duty as the true king of Westeros and the Seven Kingdoms is this: watching the ecstasy on his queen’s face as he thrusts into her. And she is no practiced whore, to be able to make such faces on command, so they must be real.

He feels more kingly than ever now, watching her face, feeling the initial flutters of her sheath around his cock. He had no idea that sex could be like this, that it could feel this good. With Selyse, it was always for duty, and it was always cold. She never gasped the way Sansa is gasping, never _looked_ at him the way Sansa is looking at him. She never even liked him, always wanting it to be over as quickly as possible, but this-! With his new queen, his new wife, he wants this to last forever.

Of course, it can’t last forever, and too soon — entirely too soon — he is close to spending. Sansa is making delightful little noises as he moves inside her, and her sheath has certainly rippled around his cock, but he can tell that she hasn’t peaked yet. With a little snarl, he brings his thumb to her nub and rubs at it, making circles around it, hoping to bring her to her peak quickly, for surely he cannot last much longer. Being inside of her is too much entirely, and he is so close to climaxing.

Her sheath flutters and clenches around him again, and he groans, thinking of anything he can to stop himself from coming, even as he continues the circles around her nub. _Finally_ she gives a little cry, her legs tightening around his waist as her sheath milks him for all he is worth and at last he allows himself to come, filling her with his seed.

He knows this is only for their duty, for the purpose of conceiving a child — a prince to carry on his line — but though the thought is almost blasphemous, he cannot help but hope that it takes a little bit longer for his seed to take root, for his queen to fall pregnant. Perhaps if he is able to give her pleasure in their marriage bed, she will eventually feel some affection for him. Though she is young — much younger than he is — he already feels some affection for her stirring in his heart, and he cannot help but hope for it to one day be returned, even though he knows the likelihood of that already.

Sansa will never love him. Selyse despised him by the time she died, and while he hopes that his new queen never feels thus about him, he is at least realistic with himself about the matter. Even if he can make her climax, which certainly never happened with Selyse, it has no bearing, really, on if she develops an affection for him. He reminds himself that their marriage is not about affection — is certainly not about _love_! — but rather one of duty to the realm. Their marriage has a higher purpose; it is to hold the realm together, North and South.

Rolling to lie beside her, he half-expects her to get up and return to her rooms, the way Selyse always did as soon as their duty was complete. Instead, though, she rolls onto her side to face him, curling her knees so they nudge at the side of his thigh. He turns his head to look at her, and is about to ask if she would not prefer to retire to her own rooms, so as to have peace and comfort — solitude — away from him, when she smiles at him. It looks tentative, a little tremulous, and he is at a loss as to what to do for a long, uncomfortable moment, in which the precious smile on her face begins to slip. When he makes an attempt at curving his own lips into a smile, though, she brightens, smiling more widely at him.

“Good night, your grace,” she whispers, lips still curled up at the corners even once the words are out of her mouth, and he wonders if this is the moment when she leaves — but she just closes her eyes and nestles into the pillow beneath her head.

He watches her for a long time before he is able to fall asleep.

When he wakes, she is curled around him again, an arm draped across his torso, her hair tickling his chin, one leg thrown over his. Like the previous morning, he attempts to rise from the bed, but is stymied by the small dissatisfied movements of his queen. Instead of becoming frustrated, though, he brings his free hand to her back and traces lightly up and down her spine.

Though he is not going to wake her simply for the purpose of having her again, the thought of doing so has him gritting his teeth and hoping the gentle movements of his hand will rouse her from sleep.

Much as he wants to be inside her heat again, he is also, dare he say it, almost enjoying the warmth of her body against his as she shifts in her sleep. His thoughts drift to matters of state as he continues stroking the soft skin of her back, and he does not realize that she has woken until she pushes up, lifting her head from his chest to look at him.

“Your grace,” she murmurs, voice threaded with sleep. “Good morning.”

One eyebrow lifts at her words, but he replies, “Good morning, my queen,” even as he slides his hand between her legs, stroking her nub and pumping his fingers slowly inside her until her inner walls are slick and ready for him. Her head tilts back, a moan escaping her as he rolls them so he is between her legs once more. She lifts her legs, wrapping them around his waist without any prompting, and he has to bite back an uncouth swear, seeing her learn even from last night to this morning.

Sliding inside her wet heat nearly makes his eyes roll back in his head, feeling somehow, impossibly, even better than it did last night. He leans down to kiss her, hoping as he does that she will not reject this advance, that she will allow him this — and she does, even kissing him back, bringing a hand to the back of his head to hold him there, at her lips.

Much as he had enjoyed kissing her last night, this is better, in the hazy morning light coming through the large windows and streaming onto the bed. Last night he had become so overwhelmed at kissing her that he rather mauled her, though she did participate. This morning, he is able to be slower, more controlled. Less wet and sloppy.

He keeps his weight on his forearm but brings his hand to the back of her head, threading his fingers through her fiery hair. She shivers beneath him and tilts her chin up, pressing her lips to his with more force as her legs squeeze around his hips, making his own hips jerk. Keeping his mouth fused to hers, he begins thrusting into her in earnest, bringing his other hand to the place where they are joined and rubbing circles around her nub. Soon — sooner than he would prefer, in truth, for he would like this to last all day, though he knows that is neither possible nor a worthy use of time — she shudders beneath him, her center contracting rhythmically around his cock, and he spills his seed inside her.

Sansa’s head falls back, parting from his, and he tries not to take it as an affront as she pants for breath. She is only trying to breathe. It is ridiculous for him to feel somehow robbed.

Rolling to lie beside her, he, too, pants at the exertion, feeling winded in more than just body for a long moment. He is preparing to rise from the bed — surely _now_ his queen tires of his attentions and presence — when he feels her hand move, sliding over until it bumps into his, taking his hand in hers and squeezing it gently. Turning his head to look at her, he squeezes her hand in return and decides to stay abed for just a little longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did actually look at pictures of costumes from GoT to see if the doublets lace up or down the front… *facepalm*  
> Also, writing smut from Sansa’s perspective is hard! Her vocabulary for what’s going on is kind of limited… and I wanted to make it realistic-ish for what she might be thinking.  
> I really hope you liked this!! There will be a bit of a time jump in the next chapter (not much of one), because otherwise I would just have done like two chapters per day for like the first eon of their marriage, and that's not exactly going to be super interesting... Anyways, if you liked this, I'd love it if you'd leave me a comment! They make me so happy :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa and Stannis talk about Margaery, Renly, and Robb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost put some smut at the end of this chapter, but I actually like it better this way.

Sansa has begun to suspect that she is with child, for she has been feeling nausea, not only in the mornings but all throughout the day, though it comes and goes rather than being a constant state. Also it has been nearly a moonturn and a half since she wed King Stannis, and her moonblood should have come in the third week after their wedding, if it kept to the fairly regular cycle it has had since it started. She likes thinking about her moonblood very little, since it is so miserable, but she does know that a woman’s moonblood stops during pregnancy. Perhaps it is only late, but she thinks not, and every day that passes without pain in her low belly makes her only more certain that she carries the king’s babe.

And yet, she has not gone to see a maester. For one, she does not want to have Pycelle anywhere near her; she does not trust him at all. But for two, any maester she told would be honor-bound to tell the king whom they serve, and she does not want him to know. If she is pregnant, he will send her to her own rooms; he will no longer bed her or sleep beside her. And that she cannot bear.

It is the only time she feels close to him, for though he always takes dinner with her and Shireen (unless there is some ambassador to entertain or some such, and even then she is always with him, for he has no skill with courtesies, and she has much more), he is perpetually busy with his duties as king, and is often preoccupied even at dinner. He says little to either her or Shireen, and they have privately concluded that he must be very distracted with affairs of state, for Shireen says that he was never like this before he became the king, before he took King’s Landing and the Iron Throne.

(It does make her glad that King Stannis insists on only lemon water at meals, instead of wine, as her mother was clear that a woman should avoid wine during pregnancy.)

She has tried gently hinting to him that he might share his burdens and discuss affairs of state with her, but he has not seemed to listen to her requests. So while she wishes she could be more helpful to him, that he would share more with her, the fact of the matter is that he only seems interested in sharing his bed with her, and she knows that is for the purpose of creating an heir only, for _everyone_ has remarked to her what a dutiful man King Stannis is. (What a dutiful man he has always been, in truth. She is near sick to death of hearing it from absolutely everyone.)

Sarra is the only one who knows, for she came into the king’s chambers one morning — after he had left, of course — to find Sansa with her head in a chamber pot.

Ginger tea, Sarra had told Sansa that her mother suggested for mother’s stomach, or mint, and as ginger is less common — and they want to keep others from guessing at her state — she has been drinking pots and pots of mint tea. (Even sweet Shireen has noticed her new preference — noticed, and begun to request it at their near-daily teas in the garden. The only problem is that mint tea does _not_ taste good with lemon cakes.)

She swore Sarra to secrecy immediately, and while Sarra does think she should see a maester, she also understands Sansa’s reasons for not doing so. One upside to this is that they have become closer, that Sansa could now count Sarra among her friends — and she has precious few of those.

Much as she likes Lady Brienne, who Mother sent with Sarra to be her guard, the Maid of Tarth is too… intense, too forthright and honest, for Sansa to trust her with this secret. She wouldn’t even have trusted Sarra with this secret, if Sarra had not found her and guessed.

Sighing, she closes her eyes against a wave of nausea and prepares to rise from the table she takes breakfast at, in the king’s chambers. He is always gone by the time she rises, and he always has the breakfast tray delivered to his rooms, so she sees no reason to go to her own rooms, though they are connected through their solars.

She is to take tea with Shireen in the afternoon, as has become routine, but this morning she is meant to spend time with some of the ladies of the Reach. Due to the close friendship between Lord Renly, Stannis’ brother, and Ser Loras, one of the sons of Mace Tyrell, the Reach fought on Stannis’ side at the Battle of the Blackwater. Apparently, so she has heard from Sarra, who is her best source for all the good gossip, Ser Loras tried to convince Lord Renly to make a claim as King, but Renly refused, saying that Stannis was the rightful heir, and asked Ser Loras to bring the might of the Reach to fight for Stannis. A few weeks after the battle, Lady Margaery and her grandmother, Lady Olenna, arrived, clearly with the intention of marrying Lady Margaery to the King. By that time, though, Robb and the Northmen had already demanded that Stannis marry Sansa.

And she is glad of it, for though the King is not the kindest of men, she knows that he will protect her, and that is more than she can trust Robb to do, apparently. She thought he would come for her, thought he would rescue her from the Lannisters, but instead he ensured that she will never really be able to leave King’s Landing. Not permanently, anyways. And for that, she cannot forgive him. She hates this city, hates the Red Keep, hates having to remember the treatment she endured on Joffrey’s orders. But she will endure it. She has to; there is no other choice.

Even though the Tyrells were thwarted in their attempt to make Margaery queen, though, they have stayed at court. Perhaps because they wish to find some other husband for Lady Margaery. And that sparks a thought — Robb is not wed yet, and to Sansa’s knowledge is not betrothed. Perhaps Lady Margaery would be interested in marrying him? Sansa supposes that Lady Margaery could also marry Lord Renly, though, and that would bring her closer to the line of succession, if that is her interest.

Hmm. She will have to think on this — and perhaps consult her husband, who knows more about the political situation and could therefore have good suggestions as to what to do about Lady Margaery. For while Sansa does like the older girl, she is also wary of her motives.

She decides to stop by her husband’s office before continuing on to meet the ladies of the Reach. Knocking at the door, she smiles a little upon hearing his stern voice call, “Enter.”

“You may stay outside, Lady Brienne,” she says to her guard as she opens the door and walks into the King’s office, next to the meeting room of the Small Council.

“My queen,” her husband says with surprise, standing up from his desk. “What brings you here?”

She smiles at him and rounds the desk to reach up on her toes and press a kiss to his cheek. Though she does not expect affection — or anything other than duty — from him, she has begun to feel it for him, and sometimes cannot contain herself from expressing it in small ways. “I have a question for you, Your Grace,” she says, taking a seat on the chaise he waves her to, the one that sits beside his desk.

“What question?” her husband asks, taking a seat again.

She stifles a sigh, though she should have expected her husband to get right to the point. “I was wondering about the issue of Lady Margaery’s marriage,” she says. “She came to King’s Landing with hopes of wedding you, as we both know, but that did not occur. Who is she going to marry instead?”

“Do you have a suggestion?” the king replies, raising an eyebrow. “Surely you did not come to my office simply to _ask_ who Lady Margaery may marry.”

Were he another man, she might flutter her eyelashes at him teasingly, but he is not some other man — he is Stannis Baratheon and her husband — so she does not do so. Instead, she says, “I thought she might wed Robb.” Tilting her head, she adds, “I also considered that she might wed your brother, due to the closeness of the friendship between Lord Renly and Ser Loras.” Her husband begins to cough. “Are you all right?” she asks, half-rising from the chaise. He waves her back, though, and coughs twice more before recovering his equanimity.

Looking slightly agitated, Stannis says, “You thought that Lady Margaery might marry Renly _because_ of his friendship with Ser Loras?” He sounds somewhat shocked, and Sansa wonders why.

“Well, yes,” she replies. “They are good friends, everyone knows that. Perhaps Ser Loras might even live with them at Storm’s End.”

These words send her husband into another coughing fit that makes her frown.

“Your Grace, are you all right?” she asks again.

Stannis clears his throat. “My queen, I do not believe- That is to say, Renly will not have children.”

Sansa frowns, deeply confused. “What on earth do you mean?” she demands.

Her husband frowns, too, face thunderous, and says, “It isn’t in him.” When Sansa just blinks at him in confusion, he adds, “The reasons are not fit for your ears, my queen.” Seeming to move on, his face smooths and he says, “Your brother may be a good choice for Lady Margaery, though. There is also your uncle, Lord Edmure, to consider. He has not yet wed, and he is certainly old enough to be married and producing an heir for the Riverlands.” He frowns again.

Having not considered Uncle Edmure, Sansa tilts her head in consideration. “The North is further than the Riverlands from the Reach,” she says quietly. “Not that we are expecting the Reach to rebel, as they fought on your side, of course.”

Stannis snorts. “The North seems more likely to rebel, given that they have already declared their independence recently.”

Inclining her head to concede that point, Sansa argues, “Our marriage was the condition for the North’s allegiance. A cousin to Robb’s children will one day sit on the Iron Throne. That is a closer alliance than that of your brother and my father, which was that of only friends. The North will not rebel again, not any time soon.”

* * *

He wants to argue with her words, but she is correct — with a child of theirs on the Throne, or even, at this stage, the promise of that child, the North will stay a part of the Seven Kingdoms, and happily. And it does make sense to ally the Reach with the North, since the largest region of Westeros also often needs supplies from the Reach to survive Winter, especially longer Winters. Of course the Northerners grow their own crops, but the soil in the North tends to be poor, and grain becomes scarce and must be rationed. He learned this as a child, growing up the son — and then brother — of a Lord Paramount, and he doubts it has changed since then. The Summer that has just passed was long, so Winter will likely be even longer.

“Perhaps it would be wise to have Lady Margaery marry your brother,” he says to Sansa. “I will send a raven to him, proposing the match.”

Sansa smiles. “And I can sing Robb’s praises to Lady Margaery and Lady Olenna,” she says, rising from the chaise and walking towards him. He wonders, for a wild second, if she is going to strike him, then dismisses the thought as utter nonsense — but he is not prepared for what she _does_ do. Sansa, still smiling at him, leans down slightly and kisses his cheek, then stands and curtsies. “Your Grace,” she murmurs, before turning and leaving his office.

He stares after her, dumbstruck. She kissed his cheek! And not just once, but twice — both when she entered his office _and_ when she left it. He fights the urge to call her back into his office and take her on his desk. That would be unbecoming — she is his wife, nothing like one of Robert’s whores. He only uses this desk, instead of having it burned, because he knows Robert never entered the King’s office near the Small Council chambers, and neither did that incest-bastard Joffrey.

Gods, is he glad that sadistic little shit is dead. Nearly a moon after their wedding, he discovered that his queen has scars on her back — a gift from Joffrey and Ser Meryn, she’d told him, making him feel relief that he’d executed all of Joffrey’s Kingsguard when he took King’s Landing. Unable to help himself, he’d kissed his way across the scars, running his lips over the slightly-raised skin, before he took her to bed that night.

Perhaps… He allows himself to really hope, for the first time, that his queen might come to care for him, at least a little, in time.

He is still pondering the potential behind the kisses Sansa — he allows himself the intimacy of her given name in the privacy of his own mind —gave him when Davos pokes his head into the office and smirks. “Her Grace visit you, then?” his old friend asks.

“ _Did_ Her Grace visit, Davos,” he corrects, somewhat tersely, narrowing his eyes at the look on Davos’ face. “And nothing like that happened, you old goat; get your mind out of the gutter.”

Davos smirks again. “But you wanted it to, didn’t you?” he observes.

Stannis scowls at his Hand. “Do you have a reason for barging into my office?” he demands.

“Just our daily meeting prior to the meeting of the Small Council,” Davos says innocently. “And I’ve nothing special to report, so we might as well move straight to the Council chamber.”

For the first time since their wedding, he is too tied up in Council matters to join Sansa and Shireen for dinner, and his wife is already curled up in his bed by the time he returns to his room. “My queen?” he says, half-expecting her to sit up at his entrance and berate him for abandoning her at dinner — as Selyse would have, except Selyse would have preferred to have dinner apart from him anyways. But Sansa just makes a mumbling noise and nestles further into his blankets.

He frowns in confusion at the bed even as he crosses the room, undoing the laces on his doublet. When he is stripped to his smallclothes, he turns back to the bed and frowns again, wondering if he should wake his wife so they can do their mutual duty. That is why she is here, is it not? Why else would she be here?

He takes his smallclothes off, too, before climbing into the bed, lifting the sheets to see that Sansa is wearing a sleeping shift and curled up on her side, facing toward the center of the bed. Her hair is braided, and he reaches out, stroking a hand over the fall of fiery red, wishing it was loose so he could loop his fingers through it.

“Sansa,” he whispers, using her name — just her given name, no title — aloud for the first time since their wedding night. She shifts but does not wake, so he repeats himself, louder. “Sansa.” When she still doesn’t wake, he sets a hand on her shoulder and shakes her, just a little, as he repeats her name again: “Sansa!”

Her eyes blink ever-so-slightly open. “Stannis?” she mumbles, a smile coming to her lips as she turns her head to look at him. “Stannis, come to bed,” she says, lifting an arm, clumsy with sleep, and patting the space beside her. “Sleep.”

She closes her eyes again — or perhaps they close on their own — and nestles her head into the palm of her hand, leaving her other hand in place, indicating where she wants him to apparently join her, just to sleep.

He is still somewhat hard, just from the sight of her in his bed, but it is difficult to feel disgruntled when she still has the remnants of a smile on her face — so he puts on a nightshirt and climbs back into bed beside her, taking her hand in his and holding it over his heart as he falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's just forget that whole Frey betrothal thing, yeah?  
> Oh, and Stannis' views on Renly and Loras have everything to do with Renly not being able to do his duty as a Lord Paramount (i.e. providing an heir) and nothing to do with them being gay. He's not creative enough to think of other ways for Renly to get someone pregnant (that is, something akin to artificial insemination), and let's just assume that Renly has discussed this with him? At some point?
> 
> A million thank-yous to everyone who has commented on this :D :D :D I love you all!!!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa wakes Stannis up, but is... less than pleased at the results. Margaery and Davos counsel Their Graces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enoy!

For the first time since her wedding, Sansa drifts slowly awake, rather than being woken by the king’s movement. At first, she wonders blearily whether he came to bed at all — she does not recall him waking her for their duty, and surely she would remember if he had? — but then she realizes that the warmth under her arm is her husband’s torso. She blinks several times, forcing the sleep to clear from her eyes, and sees that he is wearing a nightshirt. She hadn’t even realized that he _owned_ any nightshirts, for he has never before worn one in bed with her. But then, they usually fall asleep after they have coupled, and perhaps, just as she does, he thinks putting a nightshirt on after that is pointless. It’s not like any menservants attend them in the morning, that it would be improper for _her_ to be without nightclothes, and the king is always dressed and gone by the time Sarra arrives to help Sansa prepare for the day.

Except that, this morning, the king is still asleep beside her and the door is creaking softly open. Sansa’s eyes go round, and she lies still, arm draped over her husband’s chest — she realizes that his hand is clasping hers, and a warmth fills her heart — as soft footsteps cross the room. It is Sarra with the breakfast tray; Sansa recognizes her form even in the dimmer light filtering through the curtains.

Thankfully, once she has set down the tray, Sarra leaves just as quietly as she came in.

Sansa lifts her head from the pillow, looking to see if Stannis is awake yet, but he slumbers on. She wonders for a moment if she should wake him; she knows that shirking his duty — or what he would perceive as such, never mind that not a soul would even consider accusing him of it — makes him cross. And yet she is enjoying the feeling of lying beside her husband, waking up with him still in bed, and she does not want to let this moment go, because who knows when — or even if — she will have a moment like this again.

But she does not want to risk the king’s displeasure should he wake on his own and realize that she could have woken him and did not. That, she is sure, would be worse than if she wakes him now. And yet… is there a way she could be certain of avoiding his anger? Though she knows that Cersei is not someone to pattern herself after, the former queen did say something to Sansa, when King Stannis and his men were besieging the city, about a woman’s weapons. Of course, Cersei had also said that she’d have a better chance of seducing Stannis’ horse than the man himself, and is that not what Sansa is considering? Then again, he is her husband. Is it really seduction when they’re already married? Is there anything more natural and right than a husband and wife lying together?

Mind made up, she lifts herself up on an elbow and gazes down at her husband’s stern visage, softened somewhat — but not very much — by sleep. He could have woken her, she knows, for them to couple, when he returned to his room. That he did not, that he let her continue to sleep… even as she wonders what it means, it makes her heart warm in her chest.

She leans down and kisses his forehead, brushing her lips along his skin, dropping kisses first above one eyebrow, then the other, then down the length of his nose to his lips. There she kisses lightly, pressing her lips to his softly, letting her eyes fall shut.

Though she was hoping to wake him, she is still startled when he begins to kiss her back, when his hand cups the back of her head, fingers spearing through her hair, and holds her close to him.

She breaks slightly away and murmurs, “My king,” lips brushing his as she speaks.

“My queen,” he replies, hand flexing at the back of her head and pulling her back to his lips. He kisses her like a man in the desert would gulp down fresh, cool water — almost frantically, but careful in a way, too.

His other hand still clasps hers atop his chest, and his grip tightens around her smaller hand; she shifts, turning her hand in his — with some effort — to lace their fingers together. She knows the king does not care for her beyond her ability to keep the North a part of the Seven Kingdoms and to give him an heir, but as they kiss, she feels her heart stretching beyond its bounds in her chest.

“Mmm, my king, do you not have duties to attend to?” she asks, pulling her lips away from his, just for a moment, though he follows after her relentlessly. “It is-” he kisses her “-already well after-” and again “-after dawn,” she finishes, head tilting back as he begins to kiss down the length of her neck.

“I have duties to attend to here,” he growls in reply, tugging at the neckline of her nightshift until the drawstring is undone and the front of it falls to each side, exposing her chest to his eyes. He simply stares down at her for several moments, and she begins to squirm uncomfortably under his gaze, wondering what he might be thinking, if he finds her lacking in some way. But then he mutters something she cannot quite make out and bends his head to her breast, kissing the pale flesh and eventually suckling at her nipple like a babe. It is almost like what he did on their wedding night, but not quite, and it makes her gasp and toss her head from side to side, chasing the pleasure from the feeling of his mouth at her breast.

Sparks of pleasure run down from her breast to her center, and she feels her core becoming slick, ready for her husband. She shifts on the bed, her legs parting wantonly, and the king rears back from her, staring down at her with such an expression on his face that she does not even wonder what she has done wrong — she knows that she has been too licentious — but then he tears at the hem of her nightshift, yanking it up her thighs to expose her core, and pulls his own nightshirt off over his head frantically, desperately aligning his member with her core and pushing inside her with such force that she gasps at his intrusion, eyes going wide.

But then she cannot help the moan that escapes her mouth, for it feels so good that all she can do is wrap her legs about his waist and hold on as he begins to bed her in earnest, thrusting into her with even more strength than before.

She reaches up to cup his face, bringing his lips back to hers, but he is moving with too much force to truly kiss her, so instead she peppers small kisses all over his face as he strives above her. “Stannis,” she gasps as he hits a particularly sensitive spot inside her, but before she can reach her peak, he is spending inside her, filling her with his seed.

And then, before she can do much but gasp with disappointment, he is withdrawing from her with a muttered apology and bolting from the bed.

“My king?” she says in confusion, gaping at his back.

Without turning to look at her, he says, “I apologize, my queen. I should not have done that,” even as he is pulling on his clothes — and then he disappears through the door into his solar and is gone.

For a very long moment, she simply sits there in the bed, gaping after him, wondering what on earth just happened. As she shifts, though, she realizes that for the first time in their marriage, he left her unfulfilled and wanting.

Frowning, she rises from the bed and eats some of the food that Sarra brought in, scowling at her plate. Her core is almost pulsing, and she wishes she could only do something about it herself, but what can she do without her husband?

When Sarra comes in again, a dress in her arms, Sansa sighs and says to her maid, “I believe I will visit Lady Margaery today.”

Margaery — for that is what the older girl insists upon Sansa calling her, and she has finally given in and allowed Margaery to also use her given name — laughs lightly when she and Sansa meet in the gardens. “You look rather out of sorts, Your Grace,” Margaery says with a curtsey. Sansa frowns discontentedly as she links her arm with Margaery’s and they set off together down a path, Lady Brienne following behind them faithfully.

“I suppose I am rather out of sorts,” she confesses to the girl she hopes will soon be her goodsister. “That is-” she looks behind them at Lady Brienne and lowers her voice so her guard will not be able to hear “-His Grace… This morning, he-”

Margaery’s eyes widen, and she whispers back, “Did the king visit your bed this morning?”

Sansa blushes. “No — that is, every night of our marriage we have slept together in his bed — I do not think I have used my own bedchamber even once, except for a nap once or twice — but he did not return until quite late last night, and I was already asleep. This morning…”

“Aha,” whispers Margaery, “I think I see — the king bedded you this morning, and you did not… peak?”

“Yes, exactly,” Sansa whispers back, “and…”

“You are still frustrated,” Margaery concludes from the hot blush on Sansa’s cheeks.

With a sigh, Sansa nods. “I know I should not be discussing this with you, as you are still a maid and unmarried, but… I have no other friends near my own age and I certainly cannot discuss this with Shireen!”

“Certainly not!” Margaery replies. “I am glad that you know you can come to me, Sansa.” She grins. “I have some counsel for you.”

* * *

He has felt by turns ill and lustful all day, each feeling leading to the other, which leads back to the first, and as a result, he’s been in a foul mood for the entire day. He treated his queen abominably this morning, acting like a green boy with no skill at all his first time in a whorehouse — though Stannis thinks he certainly has _little_ skill — in the bedroom. He should have been more gentle with her, more subdued. Instead of treating her with the respect she deserves as his wife and queen, he treated her little better than a common whore.

“Your Grace?” says Davos from the door of his office.

“Enter,” he calls, voice terse.

Davos shifts on his feet before saying, “I know you may not like me to say such things, Your Grace, but you’ve been in a right mood all day, and the smallfolk petitioners noticed. Begging your pardon, but did you argue with Queen Sansa?”

His jaw clenches. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no, I did not argue with the queen.”

Frowning, Davos asks, “Then what, Your Grace? I do not think it too impertinent, as your Hand, to ask what bothers you today.”

His teeth grind against each other as he considers whether or not to answer Davos — on the one hand, this is a delicate matter, concerning the queen, his wife, and should be discussed only with the highest discretion, but on the other hand, Davos is his most trusted advisor. If he cannot trust Davos with this, why should he trust the other man to help him in running the kingdom? “Close the door,” he says. “And you, Ser, please wait outside,” he adds, addressing the knight of the Kingsguard who usually stays in his office. The man opens his mouth to protest, but Stannis just waves a hand and stares him down until the knight leaves.

“Your Grace,” Davos murmurs, not only closing the door but also barring it. There is a momentary grumble from outside the door, but the noise subsides after a moment.

“Sit.” He waits for Davos to follow the order before trying to continue, though frustratingly, words will not come.

Davos shifts nervously in his chair. “Your Grace, may I ask what is amiss?”

Jaw clenching again, he says, “This morning.”

“Did something happen with Her Grace?” Davos asks, looking concerned. “Is she all right?”

He tries not to grimace, but from the look on Davos’ face, he fails. “I- That is to say, we-” He grits his teeth. “As you know, we were occupied with Council matters until late last night. The queen was asleep by the time I returned to our chambers. This morning, she woke me up, and I… lost control with her,” he admits, feeling guilt curdle his innards for the dozenth time this day.

“You didn’t _strike_ her?” Davos demands, alarmed-sounding. “Your Grace-”

“No, I did not strike my wife,” he snaps, teeth grinding. “I was- too rough with her.”

Davos looks at him for a long moment, then says, “Oh,” as comprehension apparently dawns. “Ah, did Her Grace, er, complain?” he asks, looking down at his boots.

Surely she did — Stannis thinks back to their encounter this morning. Before he entered her, she had reminded him of his other duties, which he was admittedly late to. But after that… “I’m sure she would have, had I stayed any longer,” he says.

“So she did not,” Davos concludes. “Did she, ah, seem like she was in pain?”

Admittedly, his memories of the encounter are awash in his own pleasure, so he cannot truly be sure, but the noises she was making must have been ones of pain, rather than pleasure. “I think so,” he says.

“So you are not certain,” Davos replies. “And… forgive me, but is Her Grace with child? Has a maester said that… er… too much vigor during the act might be dangerous?”

He blinks, barely hearing Davos’ last words. _Might_ his wife be with child? She has slept in his bed every night since their wedding — they have coupled every night since their wedding, with no break for her moonblood, and it has been over a full moon. He does not know how long a woman’s cycle generally is, but Selyse’s was always near-exactly a moon long. Why had he not considered this before now? Why has he not had a maester examine his wife? _She_ has not gone to a maester, or he would have heard of it.

“Your Grace?” says Davos. “Are-”

From outside the door, they hear, “Your Grace!” from the Kingsguard knight, who sounds surprised.

“Yes, what?” Stannis calls, annoyed.

“No, er, that is, Her Grace is here to see you,” the knight calls back.

Stannis looks, alarmed, at Davos, who seems to be trying to hide a smirk. “What?” he growls, keeping his voice low, then calls, “Just a moment,” to the knight.

“Looks like you can have this conversation with your wife, then,” Davos says, standing and going to the door, where he unbars and opens it to reveal the queen with Lady Brienne at her back. “Your Grace,” he says with a slight bow, and Stannis is unsure which of them he is addressing, though it matters not, as Davos leaves immediately, closing the door behind him, between the queen and her guard.

“Your Grace,” says his queen with a graceful curtsey.

“My queen,” he responds, unsure what, exactly, has brought her here. Though now that she _is_ here, he might as well take this opportunity to ask her about seeing a maester. Except that while he’s been thinking, she has crossed the room and come to stand behind his desk, right beside his chair. He lifts his gaze to meet her eyes, sure that whatever requires her to be this close to his person cannot be good, but…

“My king,” she begins, a light flush on her cheeks, “I wanted to speak with you.”

“Regarding what?” he asks, curious.

She blushes in earnest, now, and says, “What happened this morning. I-” For a moment she looks lost, but then she takes a breath and continues, “My king, until this morning, you have never left me wanting in your bed.” Her gaze drops away from his; her cheeks are bright. “I thought you might…”

“You thought I might what?” he asks, feeling truly baffled. What can she want of him? And — is she not offended by his treatment of her this morning?

“I thought you might like to rectify that, Your Grace,” she says, looking directly at him, gaze bolder than he has yet seen of her. The words do not quite sound like her own; they are more brazen than he has seen her be, though prior to his taking the city, she was a hostage of the Lannisters, and so she has understandably tended towards quiet.

It takes him a very long moment to understand what she has said, and in that time, her cheeks have flamed even hotter. “You want me to-” He cannot quite bring himself to say the words. “Now?”

Sansa inclines her head.

He has never bedded a woman other than either of his wives, and never before dark. “Shall we adjourn to our chambers, then?” he asks.

“Do you not have more duties to complete this afternoon?” she asks. “I would not take you away from your office; I thought here might do.” The words have made her cheeks turn an impossibly brighter red, but she meets his gaze with her own.

“Here?” He gapes at her, shocked that she would suggest such a thing — but his blood blazes through his veins, and he is instantly hard.

She licks her lips but continues to meet his eyes. “Yes, Your Grace,” she says. “Here.”

He cannot bring himself to argue with her, to say that this is improper, to… the marching of his thoughts snuffs out like a candle flame as Sansa takes his face in her hands and leans down to kiss him. At first the kiss is sweet, soft, but he cannot be patient with his blood so heated as she makes it — he stands and lifts her onto his desk, kissing her harder all the while.

“Your Grace,” she gasps, reaching her hands down and tugging at the ties of his breeches, fumbling with them. He is gratified to know that she has no skill whatsoever with undoing men’s clothes, and reaches down himself to untie the lacing of his breeches for her, even as he kisses down the length of her neck.

She pulls up her skirts to her waist, revealing her smallclothes, and he applies himself to their drawstring. She has to stand to fully remove her smallclothes, but once they are on his floor, he lifts her back onto the desk and kisses her again, sliding a hand up her leg beneath her skirts, lifting them and baring her to his gaze. With his breeches and smallclothes drooping, letting his cock spring free, he gently runs his fingers over her core, finding her slick and ready for him.

To his surprise, she reaches between them to grasp his cock and guide it to her sheath. His wide, surprised eyes meet hers, which are heated and wanting. “Please, my king,” she breathes, lifting her legs to curl around his hips and pull him into her. He lets out an embarrassingly loud grunt at the feeling of her wet heat around his cock, but reminds himself that she came to him because he left her unsatisfied this morning, not for him to leave her thus again.

So he begins a pattern of steady thrusts coupled with the circling of his thumb around her nub, which immediately causes her sheath to flutter around his cock, making his hips stutter and his next thrust harder. She moans at that, though, and he pauses, looking down at her with confusion. Surely she would prefer he be more gentle with her — would she not?

Yet when he tests this theory, she makes pleased-sounding noises only when he is _more_ forceful with his thrusts, not less. Evidently she likes when he is not quite so gentle with her. This thought is punctuated with a particularly hard thrust, which makes his queen’s head tilt back, exposing her lovely throat to his eyes — and lips.

Feeling nearer to his end than he would prefer, Stannis circles his thumb faster around Sansa’s nub, groaning at the feel of her sheath fluttering about his cock — and when she peaks and her sheath clenches tight around him, he cannot hold in the loud moan he makes as he comes, too, spilling inside her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outtake: Davos and Brienne outside the king’s office (Davos’ POV)  
> “My lord!” Lady Brienne protests as the door closes between her and her charge.  
> He raises an eyebrow at her. “Do you imagine her to be in danger from her husband?” he asks mildly.  
> She looks like she’s trying to raise one eyebrow in return, but instead just looks agitated as she stares at him for a long moment. 
> 
> OK, so tbh this felt like the least sexy desk sex ever whilst I was writing it... I hope it was at least OK! If you have thoughts on the matter, please leave me a comment!! (Or, you know, if you have other thoughts you'd like to share :D)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An important conversation occurs. Maesters are interviewed for suitability.

In the aftermath of their coupling on the king’s desk, Sansa realizes why she should have taken him up on his offer to adjourn to his chambers — now she’s sticky between her thighs, and the feeling of his seed dripping out of her is uncomfortable. Her toes curl, but not with pleasure.

The king clears his throat, and when she looks up at his face, he has a slightly forbidding look, even as he laces up his breeches. “My queen,” he says, “There is something I would discuss with you.”

Blinking, she feels her brow furrow with uncertainty. “What is it, my king?” she asks.

“When was your last moonblood?” he asks bluntly.

She coughs. “Be- before our wedding,” she says, feeling deeply uncomfortable. It is not proper to discuss her moonblood with a man — with any man, even her husband. It is something only to be discussed with other women, or perhaps a maester, and even then in hushed voices.

“And how long is your cycle usually?” the king asks — and mercifully, he does not keep holding her gaze, but looks across the room, away from her. Hopefully, she thinks with mild spite, he is just as uncomfortable with this discussion as she is! Though that cannot be possible, or he would not have brought it up.

“The length of a moon, my king,” she says quietly. “You are asking if I am with child; I think that I may be.”

He backs up a step, bangs into his chair, swears, and scowls down at her. “Why have you not gone to a maester?” he demands. “And- what on earth was the point of- of _this_ -” he gestures between them “-if you are already with child?”

She looks down. Margaery had not prepared her for this! “Husbands and wives may lie together for pleasure, too, as well as for children,” she says. “And- I have not gone to see a maester because I knew that they would tell you, and I-” Her lower lip wobbles, but she does her best to blink back the tears welling in her eyes. King Stannis will not be merciful with her just because of maidenly tears. “I didn’t want you to send me away from your bed,” she sniffs, losing the battle to keep all the tears from falling. One trails down her cheek, and she lifts her hand to dash it away, but his gets there first.

“You- what?” He sounds completely baffled, but his fingers against the delicate skin of her face are gentle. “Why do you weep at the thought of not having to bed me? Queen Selyse-” and his voice turns bitter at her name “-wept at the opposite, or near enough did.”

What? She looks up, another tear running down her cheek, and King Stannis lifts his other hand to wipe it away, even more gentle than before. “Your Grace, you speak as if lying together is a chore to be toiled away at in drudgery, but I assure you, that is not how I think of it! And- and-” She stops herself from insulting his former wife and queen, but it is a near thing. “Queen Selyse does not sound very kind,” is all she says, “from what Shireen has told me.”

The king’s teeth grind together. “She was a cold woman,” he admits. “Our marriage was not- We were not fond of each other.”

It feels like a fist squeezing around her heart, to hear such things, to imagine Stannis so unloved by his wife. “I- Your Grace, I _am_ fond of you,” she tells him. “I- I do not know if Queen Selyse ever enjoyed her time in your bed-”

“I can assure you, she did not,” the king interjects.

“But I have,” Sansa finishes. “I have enjoyed all of it.” Looking down, she misses the amazed look on her husband’s face. “And- Your Grace, in all the nights of our marriage, I have slept peacefully and well.”

He is frowning when she chances a glance up at him. “Did you not, before?” he asks.

“Not since my father was killed,” she replies. “Between the day he died and the day of our wedding, I had not a single peaceful night.”

He doesn’t speak, instead gathering her into his arms and pulling her body close to his. Eventually he says, “Sansa, if I could erase your pain, I would. But I cannot bring your father back, much as I might wish to for your sake.”

“I miss him,” she whimpers into her husband’s chest, so quietly that she doubts he hears it. But his arms pull her tighter and she feels his lips on the crown of her head.

Stannis just rubs her back and holds her close until she has stopped sniffling. Then he sets his hands on her shoulders and peers down at her. “I am amenable to us sharing chambers for as long as you wish, my queen,” he says, astonishing her — she had been so sure that his only interest in her was the production of an heir!

“Really?” she says, eyes wide and lips curling into a disbelieving-yet-hopeful smile. “Truly?”

He nods, and though he does not smile, something in his face softens, gentles. Sansa beams at him and throws her arms around his neck, pulling him into an enthusiastic kiss that he returns quite readily.

Eventually, though, he pulls away from her and says, “You really must see a maester, though. I insist on it.”

She looks down and tries to stop her lip from wobbling. Thinking of Father has brought all of her emotions to the surface, it seems. “Not Maester Pycelle,” she mutters, staring at the king’s boots.

“What?” he asks, tone harsh; she flinches. Gentling his tone, he brings a hand to her chin and tips it up. “What was that?”

“Not Maester Pycelle,” she repeats, louder. “I will see another maester, but not him.”

Her husband frowns. “He is the Grand Maester. It is his duty to see to the health of the royal family.”

“I will not see him,” Sansa vows, both hands going to her belly, where their child has begun to grow, though not near enough to be seen. “Not for any ailments I myself have, not for my pregnancy, and _never_ for my children.”

“But why?” Stannis asks. “What is so abhorrent about Maester Pycelle?”

She sighs and closes her eyes tightly to stave off tears. When she is sure she can speak without sobbing, she opens her eyes again and says, “He was there when they made me write to Robb, telling him to come to King’s Landing and swear to Joffrey. Him and Lord Baelish and Cersei and Lord Varys, though Lord Varys at least didn’t call me the seed of a traitor the way Pycelle did. He just said that my father was a traitor. An awful traitor.”

“Pycelle called you what?” Stannis’ jaw is clenched and his hands have both formed fists.

“He said that the seed of a traitor was no fit queen and who knew what treasons I might hatch,” Sansa says, the words bitter in her mouth. “Lord Baelish was the only one who was kind to me, who said I was innocent.”

“Baelish is a snake of the highest order,” the king snaps. “Who somehow, damn him, managed to escape King’s Landing and leave the Crown with this thrice-bedamned debt to the Iron Bank. But Pycelle always was a Lannister crony.” He grimaces. “Unfortunately, I cannot remove him as Grand Maester. Even the king does not have that power. But I can promise that neither you nor any child of ours will have to suffer his attentions as maester. We’ll find a different maester to take care of you and the child. And Shireen, I suppose,” he adds as an afterthought.

“Thank you,” Sansa breathes, relieved beyond measure not to have to tolerate Pycelle as her maester. Beyond the reasons she gave Stannis, Pycelle simply gives her the creeps.

“You are my queen,” he says. “Your comfort is important to me.”

* * *

The words surprise him, but he cannot recant them, as they are completely true. Her comfort, surprising though it may be, _is_ important to him. He wants her to be as happy as she can be, as it is possible for anyone to be in the cesspit that is King’s Landing, and especially the royal court.

He does wish that he had thought of the possibility of her being pregnant sooner, though. What if, without the proper care and instruction from a maester, she miscarries the babe? He closes his eyes and reminds himself that she is not Selyse, that her mother bore five healthy children. Besides, Sansa is still quite young to bear children, and should the worst happen, they have many years ahead of them.

“Here, sit down,” he says, indicating the chaise that Davos had ordered placed in his office, beside his desk, “and I shall send for the other medically-trained maesters in the Red Keep. We can choose one of them together.”

She looks surprised for a half-second, and then she smiles, wide and bright, so much so that it fair blinds him. “Thank you, my king,” she says, rising up on tiptoes, lifting her hands to his face, and kissing him, just once, before she pulls back and takes a seat on the chaise.

He calls for the Kingsguard knight outside the door to come back in, and tells him to find someone to send to fetch the medically-trained maesters. The knight looks surprised, but does as instructed, and soon his office has four maesters in it, though the servant sent to fetch them informs him that there is one more who was with a patient and refused to leave them, even for a summons from the king.

“Which of you has the most experience with care of a pregnant woman?” he asks, eyeing them all with faint suspicion. He does not know any of these maesters and wishes for Cressen or even Pylos, both of whom stayed on Dragonstone.

“I have studied-” one of them begins, but another cuts him off.

“Studied! Hah!” the second spits. “Your Grace, I have ten years of experience with the noble ladies of the court and their children.”

“I have studied the most recent treatises on care of women, pregnancy, and childbirth,” the first says, drawing himself up and fixing the second with a malevolent look. “In addition to eight years of experience outside the Citadel.”

“And you?” Stannis asks the third before the first two can devolve into bickering. “What is your experience?”

The man — the oldest-looking of the maesters in the room, though not doddering — says, “I have found that midwives often have great wisdom to share, and would advise consulting one in addition to whatever care is given by a maester.”

Raising an eyebrow, for the man raises a valid point, Stannis says, “Yes, but your experience.”

“I have had twenty years serving the people of King’s Landing and the Red Keep,” he says, “including the care of many pregnant women.”

The last of the four maesters in his office is the youngest. “I- I do not believe I have the experience you require to care for the Queen in her gravid state, Your Grace,” he says.

“Indeed,” Stannis says curtly, glancing over at Sansa. She rises from her seat and comes to whisper in his ear, returning to the chaise when she is done. “You and you,” Stannis says, pointing to the first two maesters, “leave.”

To their credit, neither of them protest, both simply bowing and retreating from his office.

“We will have the both of you examine the queen and give your recommendations,” Stannis says to the remaining two maesters, “and then we shall make our decision.” Pointing to the younger one, he says, “You will wait outside until your colleague is done.”

The younger maester nods, bows, and retreats to the outside of his office, leaving the older one. “What is your name, Maester?” Sansa asks from the chaise.

“I am Maester Aldwyn, Your Grace,” he tells her. “Shall we begin?”

He questions the queen about her last moonblood, the length of her cycles, and any symptoms she might be experiencing, listing several that he names as being common for pregnant women. Sansa darts occasional looks towards where Stannis stays seated at his desk, but she responds fully, if quietly. Stannis learns that she has been feeling nausea throughout the day and has had several episodes of vomiting in the mornings, as well as mild headaches. She has also been experiencing some fatigue.

There are several other questions Maester Aldwyn asks, mainly to Sansa, though a few questions are for Stannis as well. He is familiar with everything the maester says from the care that Selyse received from Maester Cressen, and there is nothing new that he hears.

Eventually Maester Aldwyn asks Sansa to recline on the chaise so he can feel her belly. She darts a worried look toward Stannis, and he rises and comes to stand at her side, taking her hand in a gesture that, though foreign to him, feels very right. She squeezes his hand as the maester pokes and prods at her belly, and he squeezes hers in return, after a moment of internal dithering over whether or not to.

Once finished, Maester Aldwyn stands and smiles down at them with a kindly look on his face. Stannis is unsure if it is trustworthy; some kind-seeming people have ended up being quite the opposite, in his experience. “All I would advise is that Your Grace rest when you feel it is warranted, and I would also suggest that you secure the care of an accomplished, experienced midwife. I know several in the city that I could suggest.”

“Thank you, Maester Aldwyn,” Sansa says sunnily. “I appreciate your expertise.”

“You may wait outside while your colleague examines the queen,” Stannis tells him.

Maester Aldwyn bows and leaves the room; the youngest of the maesters — though, appearing to be in his early forties, he is still older than Stannis — enters and closes the door behind him.

“Your name?” Stannis asks.

“Master Rendal. Your Grace.” He bows — a little jerkily, Stannis notices, though that is easily attributable to nerves, which this youngest maester seems rather prone to. He asks the same series of questions as Maester Aldwyn, though not in exactly the same order, and has essentially the same advice, though without the suggestion to find a midwife.

Once Maester Rendal is done, Stannis says, “Wait outside with Maester Aldwyn. The queen and I will confer and then call you back in.” He waits until the door has shut behind the young maester before turning to Sansa. “Your thoughts, my queen?”

“I liked Maester Aldwyn’s manner better,” she says, “but the care and advice was essentially the same. Neither, I would note, gave the advice that I heard early and often from my own mother — not to drink wine or spirits during pregnancy. I would,” she concludes, “suggest that we have them both care for me during my pregnancy, so that we do not alienate either of them. Additionally, Maester Aldwyn seems fairly old, and I would prefer to have consistent care through all of my pregnancies” — she blushes — “should we be so blessed, my king.”

Her reasoning is sound, and he has little to add, so all he does is call the pair of maesters back into his office to deliver their decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for being here!! Especial thanks to those of you who have commented - your comments are definitely keeping me going on this story. I hope you liked this chapter, and if you did, I'd love to hear what part you liked best!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How does Stannis' knowledge of Sansa's pregnancy change their marital activities?  
> Also, Stannis thinks too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More smut, y'all.
> 
> Warning for character thoughts about miscarriage. (Just thoughts, though.)

That night, when they retire to the king’s rooms after dinner with Shireen, King Stannis is incredibly gentle with her. It is in the way he unlaces her dress, his hands slower than usual. This is not to say that he is normally _ungentle_ with her, but the difference is still noticeable.

It is even more noticeable once they are in bed together. His hands are mild on her skin; his lips stray no further than her neck. Once he is inside her, he keeps his movements slow and even. Though the way his member drags against her inner walls is pleasant, the movement leaves much to be desired. She wishes for the way he took her atop his desk, and thinks, _be brave, Sansa. Be brave as Margaery counseled you to._

“Your Grace,” she says tentatively, “would you perhaps…” Her voice trails off as he stops moving within her, as her nerve fails.

“Would I what, my queen?” he asks, leaning his weight on one arm and bringing his other hand up to stroke the side of her face. She tries to meet his eyes, but she cannot speak these words aloud while _looking_ at him; it seems wanton and shameful.

“You- this afternoon, when I came to your office,” she says, eyes lowered so she is looking at his finely-muscled chest and not his face, “you- the way that you moved was… harder?” Her gaze flickers back up to meet his, and his eyes have such intensity in them, such heat, that she cannot look away.

“And you… did not mislike it, my queen?” he asks. There is a hint of something in his eyes — apprehension, perhaps — but she cannot focus on it over the way his gaze pins her in place.

“I- No. I did not mislike it,” she says, breath shaky in her lungs and throat. “It- I-” She finally tears her eyes away from his, admitting, “I liked it very much. It felt…” She blushes as her eyes dance up once more to meet his, and the heat in them has increased _so_ much that she gasps. “Oh,” she breathes, “my king, it felt good — _so_ good.”

His jaw has tightened with her words, and his look is so intense she might think it angry, if she had not seen him truly angry. (Not with her; he has never been furious at her, but she has seen the way his anger makes his visage turn cold.) “And you would prefer that I move thus now?” he asks, voice as tight as his jaw.

“I- yes, my king,” she whispers, and gasps at the near-violent way he leans down to kiss her as he withdraws from her channel and then thrusts into her much harder than he had been, in a way that makes her clench up inside, in a way that causes sparks of pleasure to sing through her veins. His tongue delves into her mouth, twining around her own tongue, stroking against it in much the same way that his member strokes inside her channel. She gasps with pleasure, broken little moans and panting noises escaping her.

With a particularly hard thrust, the king — Stannis, she allows herself to think of him, though only in the privacy of her mind, as he clearly prefers her more formal address out loud — growls and burrows a hand between them to make circles over the nub of her pleasure until her sheath ripples around him as she peaks. Only moments later, he makes a strangled groaning noise as he spends inside her.

They both lie there, panting, for several moments before King Stannis rolls to his back. He leaves space between them, but she immediately curls into his side, wanting to be closer to him.

“I am glad that I remembered to ask the maesters whether continued marital activities would harm the babe,” Sansa says softly into the quiet of the room. It had caused a slightly awkward moment earlier, when the king called both maesters back into his office to tell the pair of them their decision, but she does not regret it. The younger maester — Rendal — had looked shocked, but the much-older one, Aldwyn, had only smiled and told them that continued marital activities should be just fine, as long as the queen was not having any discomfort with them.

“And you were not… discomfited, my queen?” Stannis asks.

“Not at all,” she says with a smile, resting her hand over his heart. “Everything felt lovely.”

The king raises his head to look at her, and she tilts her own head to meet his gaze. “You need not flatter me with falsities,” King Stannis says, scowling.

Her brows pull together. “What falsities, my king? I speak only the truth.”

A furrow appears between his brows. “I know that I am not… skilled, my queen,” he says. “In the matter of marital activities.”

“Is my word not enough for you?” she asks, pulling away from him a little, feeling her shoulders curl in. “I do not care that you…” She pauses, trying to find a kind way to say that she in honesty prefers that he does not have relations with whores the way his brother did. “I know that you hold fidelity in high esteem,” she says eventually, looking at him with concern in her eyes, “and I do as well. And- forgive me, my king, but you must be aware that you have pleased me, have made me peak. That seems skilled enough to me.” By the end of this, her eyes have sunk to stare at his neck, unable quite to look him directly in his eyes.

He reaches out and tilts her chin up; she lifts her eyes as well until they meet his. “Perhaps I am letting old words form my views too much,” he says quietly, after looking into her eyes for so long that she feels her toes squirm a little, her feet curl, though she will not look away from him, not now, not when he is looking at her like this. “Hmm.” He releases her chin, and she leans up to kiss him lightly before once again curling into his side, resting her head on his shoulder and her hand on his heart.

They lie there together, and though she can practically feel King Stannis thinking beside her, she falls asleep easily.

* * *

His wife — his beautiful, young, _pregnant_ wife, who somehow finds him pleasing at least in the bedchamber — is asleep on his shoulder, which has started to ache slightly from its positioning. He grimaces, misliking that he must move her, but he will not be best able to do his duty with an aching shoulder in the morning. Gently he turns her, rolling her so she faces away from him, and curves his body around hers, letting an arm rest over her abdomen, with his hand on her belly, where their child has begun to grow.

Robert’s words from when they were both young men still dance through his mind, and though his queen’s words have quieted his brother’s voice, it has not disappeared completely. _Stannis the Stoic_ , Robert would call him, even when they were little boys. Especially, though, once Stannis had turned sixteen and refused Robert’s offers of joining him at — and then outright attempts at dragging Stannis to — various whorehouses and brothels. Even after the Rebellion, once Robert was king, his older brother kept attempting to bring Stannis along on such visits. Even once Robert was married!

Though Stannis has long since resigned himself to Robert’s habits, the thought of dishonoring his wife thus is abhorrent. He would never have done such a thing to Selyse — and never did, even though Robert more than once had a whore sent to Stannis’ office as Master of Ships. On such occasions, Stannis simply gritted his teeth and sent the whores away, telling them they would have more luck with his brother.

Perhaps, he muses, such dishonor on Robert’s part left him open to the appalling behavior of Cersei Lannister. Not that such a thing could be deserved — as queen she should have done her duty to Robert in bearing his trueborn children, no matter how much she misliked it, or him — but if it could, Robert would have deserved it for his own horrendous behavior.

Stannis intends to give his queen no such incentive to infidelity. Even were she uninterested in continuing to share his bed — though, through some miracle, she seems to even _like_ the idea, much to his consternation — he would never dishonor her the way Robert did Cersei. Not when his queen is such a prize. He does not exactly like to think of her thus, as a prize to be won, but he certainly finds that she is highly prized, both by himself and by his advisors. And now she carries — potentially, he must remind himself that it is not assured — his heir. Yet another reason to value her, though of course her value lies not only in her ability to give him a son.

Still, he hopes she takes after her mother, and not her aunt, in this. Lysa Arryn, like Selyse, bled out babe after babe, though she did eventually, unlike Selyse, manage to give her husband a son, an heir. Sansa’s mother gave Eddard Stark three sons, and — to his knowledge — suffered no miscarriages.

He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against his queen’s hair, letting his hand stroke small circles on the barely-palpable swell of her belly. It is early yet, and he knows, from all of Selyse’s miscarriages, that the early months are the time when it is most likely for the babe to be lost.

The thought is a difficult one, but he reminds himself again that his queen is still quite young and has many years ahead of her for potential childbearing.

Though his mind still races, he manages, eventually, to fall asleep.

In the morning, the queen is, as usual, tangled around him like a creeping vine. However, unlike the early mornings of their marriage, when he would get annoyed that he could not easily rise to go about his duties, now he finds himself looking down at Sansa with fondness. He was never fond of Selyse, and had not expected to feel anything like this for Sansa when the match was originally demanded by her brother and his bannermen. And yet — he has come to be quite fond of her.

And somehow, miraculously, she professes to feel fond of him! He barely noticed it — and did not respond to it at all — when she first said it, too occupied with the revelation of her pregnancy. It was only later that he realized what she had said, and he has no idea how to respond, when the moment is long gone. He is not the sort of man prone to blurting out his _feelings_ , and neither is he the sort for sweet nothings in the marriage bed. Besides, by nature a “sweet nothing” has no inherent meaning, does it not? When he says things, he _means_ them.

Perhaps he should assure the queen that he feels similarly for her — though of course whatever fondness she may have for him would certainly pale in comparison to his own feelings for her. But how would he go about doing so? He cannot simply bring it up to her, with nothing preceding it.

Staring at the ceiling, he does not notice that the object of his thoughts has awoken until she strokes a finger between his brows, smoothing the furrow that has formed there.

“What disturbs you, my king?” she asks. He wishes she would use his name, but she must prefer this more formal address, even when they are in bed together, for though she used his given name a few times at the very beginning of their marriage, she quickly stopped doing so.

“Nothing that need concern you, my queen,” he replies. Though of course it does have to do with her, it is nothing she need concern herself with, at least not _now_. Perhaps once he has given the matter more thought, once he has decided what — and how — he will tell her. But for now, she can stay happily ignorant of his thoughts.

She smiles placidly — her court smile, as he has begun to think of it after seeing it so many times when he is holding court and she attends — and says, “As you say, my king. I will restrict my concerns to that which you deem proper.”

His brow furrows as he frowns down at her, but her expression stays even. He knows that she is not mocking him — she would never do that — but this is the first time she has spoken _quite_ so carefully around him in a long while. She spoke thus at the beginning of their acquaintance, when he was the king who had just taken King’s Landing, even when they were first betrothed, but as she grew to know him, he thinks, her manner became less practiced, less stiff. This is the first time she has — in private, and not in court — acted in such a way in the — admittedly short thus far — whole of their marriage, and he wonders why.

But her expression does not change; she does not say anything further, and so he rises from the bed to go about his duties. “I wish you a fair day, my king,” Sansa says from the bed as he dresses, pulling on his smallclothes, breeches, and shirt.

“The same to you,” he replies, donning his doublet and sitting to pull on his stockings and boots. “You will take tea with Shireen this afternoon?”

“I do so every day, my king,” she says. When he looks at her, she has rolled onto her side to face him, with the sheet tucked up over her chest.

“And you will visit with the Ladies Tyrell this morning, I believe.” He watches her, but her expression stays the same: a small, calm smile that — for some reason — makes his jaw clench.

“That is the plan, my king.”

His teeth grind together at her statement, though he cannot place what about it frustrates him so much. Before he says anything unbecoming and uncouth, he rises from the chair, gives her a stiff nod, and leaves the room — though the memory of her complacent smile and words haunts his day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope everyone is staying safe and healthy out there with this whole COVID-19 thing going on. I'm in Seattle, which is mostly shut down due to social distancing... so I'm going a bit stir-crazy with my whole family stuck in the house all day every day (we do go on daily walks around the neighborhood, but still).  
> Anyways, I really hope you liked this chapter!! (All the comments I'm getting on this story are amazing!! Thank you so much to all of you!!) Please let me know any thoughts you have on it - I'd love to know what you're thinking, good, bad, or otherwise!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A raven from Robb. Stannis considers the training schedule of the Kingsguard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for very brief thoughts about miscarriage.  
> Yes, I am aware that “inuration” is not actually a word, but I needed a noun and there weren’t any that meant the right thing. Now there is. (It’s the noun form of “inure” if you want to know what it means.)

Sansa spends the next moon of her pregnancy with near-constant nausea, which is only relieved by the strips of candied ginger that the midwife Maester Aldwyn recommended, Mellinna, suggests. Sansa carries a bag of it with her everywhere she goes, and accidentally starts a trend among the court ladies of carrying small bags of candies.

Somehow, the news of her pregnancy has not spread through the court, though she does not know how long that good fortune will last. She does not want to be scrutinized by the members of the court throughout the length of her pregnancy, but she also knows that their ignorance of her situation cannot last forever. Eventually she will start to show, though hopefully not for a few more moons yet. Luckily, all of the maesters she and the king interviewed have kept their silence on the matter, and Sarra is a good Northern girl who is excellent at bringing Sansa all of the court gossip but terrible at spreading any gossip from Sansa to the rest of the court. Mellinna also knows how to keep a secret well, and while Sansa and the king have offered her quarters in the Red Keep, Mellinna declined them in favor of her home, where she serves many of the poorer women of King’s Landing.

Since the king chastised her for asking about what was bothering him, she has kept her thoughts more to herself around him, speaking only when he asks her questions or says things which require a response. She misses talking to him with the relative ease she had before, but now she is wary of offending him and becoming a target of his anger. She has too much experience with the anger of kings and how it is satisfied. First she lost Lady to King Robert’s anger, and then she lost her father to Joffrey’s. Who else has she to lose, here in King’s Landing? Sarra? Lady Brienne? Much as she appreciates Lady Brienne, much as she likes and cares for Sarra, they mean little to her in comparison with who she has already lost.

Adrift in her musings, she startles badly when a servant coughs discreetly a few feet away from her. “Beg pardons, Your Grace,” the boy says. “His Grace is asking for you in his office.”

“I’ll go there directly, then,” she says, with a kind smile for the boy. After all, it’s not his fault she was startled. “Thank you.”

He bows as she rises from her seat in the garden and starts on her way to King Stannis’ office. Halfway there, a wave of nausea hits her and she grimaces, taking a strip of candied ginger from the small pouch she carries. Chewing the ginger, she walks the rest of the way to the king’s office, nodding and smiling at the courtiers she passes on the way.

The nausea hits her again just as she reaches the king’s office, and she reaches into the pouch for another strip of ginger as she walks in.

“Are you well, my queen?” King Stannis asks, rising from his seat. She dips a small curtsey to him and nods her head.

“I am fine, my king,” she replies.

“Hmm.” He frowns, brow furrowed as he looks at her for a long, uncomfortable moment, in which she keeps her face as still as possible. “I have received a raven which you might like to look at.” He gestures to his desk, and she takes the gesture as an invitation to approach him, hoping she will not give offense. When she is standing by the side of the desk, he hands her the raven scroll, which she unrolls to read. “Your brother is amenable to an alliance with the Reach, it seems,” the king says when she looks back up at him. “He has asked the Crown to arrange the match.”

“So he has,” she murmurs, looking back down at her brother’s words, tracing her fingers across the letters he penned himself — she recognizes his hand. Much as she may feel bitter that he abandoned her here in King’s Landing, that he never came to save her, she does miss her brother. “Will you write to Lord Mace to do so?”

“Yes,” the king says, reaching out and taking the scroll from her, his fingers stroking her palm.

She hopes that the king does not simply order Lord Mace to comply with the match, as that would be more likely to embitter the Reach toward the Crown than to do anything helpful. But she does not feel that she can say anything to the king, for fear of angering him.

Until he says, “What do you advise, my queen? How should I best approach Lord Mace to ensure the best chances of his responding favorably?”

She bites her lip, looking at the king carefully. His face is open — as open as she has ever seen it — and he seems genuinely curious about her advice for the best path forward. She opens her mouth to respond, then closes it. Eventually she says, “I am sure whatever you think is best would be appropriate, my king.”

His jaw clenches, and she stills her face to keep from wincing as she watches him take a deep breath. “I asked for your advice, my queen,” he says, his tone gentler than she is used to hearing. “I would like to hear your thoughts. As you are aware, I have less skill than you in the matter of social niceties. I believe Lord Mace will need some finessing, to be as positively inclined toward the match as he can be.”

She takes a deep breath, knowing that she must be even more careful than before, now that she has frustrated him. What can she say? What advice can she give? “I do not know Lord Mace, my king,” she says eventually. “Other than- that is, when I was a child, I overheard my father telling my mother that he and the commanders of his army feasted daily in sight of the walls of Storm’s End during the siege. I do not-” she pauses to hide another wince as his teeth grind together — “I do not say this to bring up unpleasant memories, my king, only to say that- I know little and less of Lord Mace. Why would he act in such a way? Was it intentional strategy on his part, to make you more likely to surrender? Was it simply petty and thoughtless? If it was a stratagem, was it the invention of Lord Mace, or did one of his men suggest it?”

His deep, ferocious frown has lessened somewhat as she kept talking, and now it is more thoughtful than anything else.

“I have heard Lady Olenna refer to her son as a buffoon, as ‘that fat fool,’” Sansa continues. “Perhaps if you do your best to flatter Lord Mace, he will acquiesce more easily. And- perhaps if you mention that Lady Margaery would be a sister to me, that she herself has said that she would love to see the North, that she has said she thinks well of my brother Robb.”

“Indeed,” the king says. “Those are prudent ideas, my queen. I thank you for them.” He dips his head in her direction, and she chances a small smile that widens when his lips twitch up in response to hers. “Would you stay while I compose the raven to Lord Mace?” the king asks. Her eyes widen, but she nods and agrees to do so. “Perhaps you could stay until the time you will be taking tea with Shireen,” the king suggests.

She sits down on the chaise, wishing she had her embroidery basket with her.

“Would you like anything, my queen?” the king asks. “A pot of mint or ginger tea, perhaps?”

“Oh, that would be very nice, my king,” she says. “And… perhaps someone could be sent to my solar for my embroidery basket?”

“Ah, of course,” he says. “Lady Brienne?”

Sansa’s guard, standing against the wall just inside the door with the Kingsguard knight, makes a small, discontented noise, one that Sansa is sure will annoy the king.

And she is right: “I am fully capable of protecting Her Grace,” the king says brusquely. “And Ser Barristan is here, too.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Lady Brienne says, bowing and leaving the king’s office.

* * *

Honestly! Does his queen’s guard not trust him, her king, to be able to protect his own wife? His teeth grind at the thought, at the insult of it.

“I am sure Lady Brienne meant no offense, Your Grace,” Ser Barristan says. “She is simply occupied with being as good and capable a guard to the queen as she can be.”

“Indeed,” he grumbles, taking a deep breath to calm himself, as Davos has suggested in the last week. He finds that it works surprisingly well, and is gratified at the good ideas his Hand has for him in this matter. Davos, too, has noticed the strange distance the queen has been placing between herself and Stannis, and has wondered at it in their daily meetings. Stannis finally admitted to Davos that he does not know what he did to cause her to act thus, only that one morning she began acting in such a way. When Davos questioned him further about what he said or did prior to her acting thus, Stannis admitted that he had told the queen not to concern herself with what worried him.

At that, Davos had shaken his head and told Stannis “as one married man to another” that it was an exceedingly stupid thing to say, and that if Davos ever said something similar to Marya, he would be smacked upside the head, and rightly so. A husband’s concerns are his wife’s concerns, too, Davos told Stannis.

Even when it was something he did not feel ready to share with his wife? Stannis had wondered aloud.

Davos had shaken his head again and said that, in such a case, the husband simply says that it is something he will share at a later time, that it is something he is not ready to share yet. Honesty, Davos stressed, honesty and openness are important between a husband and wife. He had said that he knows the marriage between Stannis and Selyse was not like that, but that Stannis’ former marriage was not one to pattern his current marriage after. Didn’t he want a better, more peaceful and happy marriage, this time?

Well, indeed he did, Stannis had agreed. But certainly there were some matters of state that it was not necessarily appropriate to tell the queen, on account of her delicate sensibilities.

Davos had raised an eyebrow at that and said that he didn’t think the queen’s sensibilities were quite so delicate, “if Your Grace will forgive me.” Though he had acknowledged that some matters of state were perhaps not appropriate for the queen’s ears.

Hmph. He is still — he thinks understandably — frustrated with Lady Brienne. However, he must acknowledge that she has done an excellent job of guarding his wife thus far, though she has not yet been truly tested in her ability. Hmm — perhaps he should challenge Lady Brienne to a bout in the training yard — he has noticed that he feels slightly less strong than he used to, now that he is training less. And in that vein, surely all of his Kingsguard should be training daily, yet he has not noted them doing so.

“Ser Barristan,” he barks, “how often do the Kingsguard train?”

“Every other day, Your Grace, for most of us,” Ser Barristan replies.

“Hmm. I will join you all in the training yard henceforth, every morning,” he says, glancing at the queen, who is watching the pair of them with interest in her eyes, though when she notices him looking, she smooths her expression in a way he has never been able to do.

“Very good, Your Grace,” Ser Barristan says. “If I may be so bold, your brother never joined us in the training yard, and his fighting skills suffered for it.”

“Indeed,” Stannis says. “I would prefer to be prepared, if anyone else wants to challenge my throne.”

Ser Barristan nods. “A wise idea, Your Grace.”

He turns his attention back to the contents of his desk and picks up a quill to draft the raven. He goes through several drafts before he has one he is pleased with, but when he hands it to Sansa to review, her brow furrows — just for a moment, before she smooths her face again — when she looks down at it.

“If I may, my king,” she says, “I would perhaps amend this slightly.” She suggests a few small edits, inserting complimentary phrases deftly into his — he realizes — rather terse message.

“Thank you, my queen,” he says, lifting her hand and lightly kissing its back. “I appreciate your assistance.”

She shrugs and looks down. “It is paltry help, my king.”

He tugs lightly at her hand until she stands right beside his chair. Standing, he cups her face in both hands and leans down to kiss her, gently and softly. “It is useful to me, my queen,” he says. “I do not thank people for useless help, as I am sure you know.”

She nods, her expression shy. “I do know that, my king.”

He kisses her forehead, and then her lips once more, for good measure. They have shared his bed each night of the last moon, in the time since something changed, and though they have laid together on each of those nights, he feels somehow distant from her. It makes him want to hold her closer to him, close enough to almost envelop in himself, though he knows such a thing is impossible.

The moment is interrupted by the door of his office opening to reveal Lady Brienne with Sansa’s sewing basket. The queen takes a small step back from him, though Lady Brienne’s somewhat surprised expression tells him that she certainly noticed what they were doing.

“Thank you, Lady Brienne,” Sansa says, walking around his desk and going to take the basket from her guard. “It was easy to find?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” she says with a bow, taking her place by the door once more.

Sansa smiles at her and returns to the chaise, where she reaches into the basket and pulls out a medium-sized piece of yellow cloth, about the size of one of his shirts.

“What is that?” he asks, then realizes that his tone was perhaps a bit harsh. Gentling it, he says, “What are you making, my queen?”

She looks up at him and says, “A blanket for the babe, my king. I plan to embroider it with stags and wolves and fishes and turtles.”

He is surprised by the feeling of his eyes stinging — perhaps there is too much dust in his office? — but he is incredibly touched that she not only know the sigil of his mother’s House, but plans to include it in the blanket she is making for their child. His voice is rough when he says, “You know the sigil of the Estermonts, my queen.”

“Of course I do,” she says with a small frown. “I know the sigils of most Houses, but certainly that of my husband’s mother!”

It has been too long since anyone reminded him of his mother, but this— this reminds him of the way his mother stitched a blanket for Renly when she was pregnant with him, decorated with stags and turtles. He wonders what happened to that blanket, wonders if Renly still has it, if it is in the nursery at Storm’s End.

Then he wonders if perhaps she ought to have waited until later in her pregnancy to begin making things for the child. If she loses the babe, will she save the blanket for any children they have later, or will she discard it? He closes his eyes and masters himself, pushing the thought away. Thinking on it overmuch will neither cause such a thing to happen nor prevent it, and it will not prepare him for such an eventuality any more than he is already, with his inuration to the vast number of miscarriages Selyse suffered.

“Thank you for including her sigil,” he says. His voice is still slightly rough, he notices.

Sansa looks up at him and smiles. “Of course,” she says. “She was your mother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I have decided that Ser Barristan went to Dragonstone to pledge himself to Stannis as the rightful heir after he was dismissed by Joffrey.
> 
> My mother, watching a short clip of Stannis: “Yeah, he doesn’t look very socially adept.” “We look at his face and we think: our expectations are managed.” (Actual Quotes)
> 
> Also: poor Sansa's freaking nervous system! I hope this illuminates what's going on in her head adequately. Yes, it's kind of a hypervigilance response, but I don't think it's too too unrealistic (at least, I hope not - let me know your thoughts on the matter!). 
> 
> Holy Cow, I cannot believe the response the last chapter got!! I have not responded to your comments yet, but rest assured that I will when I have the emotional wherewithal to do so :D I love you all, and I would love to see your thoughts on this chapter, too! Hope you are all staying safe in this time of coronavirus.


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